Giants of the Frost Page 28

  I paused when I was out of sight and rested my face on Arvak’s mane. What had just happened? I had ridden in like Death himself and none of them had flinched. How was I to convince these people that they must leave?

  I heard a voice then, from the edge of the forest.

  “Vidar?” It was you, following me into the trees.

  I dismounted and pulled off my helm, waiting for you among the shadows. “What do you want?” I asked as you drew closer.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” you said.

  “You should be.”

  “I believe in the old gods,” you said. “I believe in them more than I believe in Isleif’s God, because he’s mysterious and nobody has ever seen him, but my brother, Hakon, once saw Thor on the battlefield at Gokstad.”

  “Then why aren’t you afraid?”

  “I said I’m not afraid of you,” you said. “There are many things I’m afraid of, but as for Odin or Thor or God”—you lifted your shoulders—“who knows what they want from us?”

  I took a step forward. I wanted to seize your shoulder, but I was afraid to touch you, to feel the warmth radiating from your skin. “I know that Odin wants you to leave. You must convince Isleif.”

  You smiled mischievously. “You seem very sure, Vidar.”

  “This is not a joke,” I said.

  “I’ll tell him,” you said. “Will I see you again?”

  “You must leave,” I said. “You must never see this place or me ever again.” As I said it, an unexpected melancholy descended and I had to turn my back on you. “Go, Halla. Tell Isleif to leave this very night or tomorrow. I can’t guarantee your safety any longer than that.”

  “Vidar, don’t go,” you said.

  But I jumped on Arvak’s back and urged him away at speed.

  My plan had been to wait until nightfall to return to Asgard. Now a seed of some new dissatisfaction had been sown within me and I found it impossible to imagine myself leaving just yet. I felt impatient, and vulnerable, alternately filled with energy or gripped by torpor. I wanted to range the forest all night, then I wanted to lie down on a bed of skins and think about the soft curve of your throat. Sleep was unthinkable. Returning to the mission was out of the question. I settled for a compromise. When evening descended, I sat at the outer edge of the fjord and watched the church and the three little houses, knowing that you were inside one. Perhaps you sat by the fire spinning, or perhaps you were eating, or sleeping. I sat for many hours in the cold and the dark, while the black water rippled silent and deep at my feet. A snatch of an old tune stuck in my head, a love song that one of my father’s servants always sang. The night soaked me up, its gloom suffused me. I pulled my cloak tight around myself and wondered what was happening to me.

  Then I saw a figure approaching. Your fair hair caught the starlight and at first you didn’t see me, and then I must have moved just enough to draw your eye. You revealed no surprise, but you were more cautious than you had been in the daylight.

  “I thought about you and you appeared,” you said.

  “Good night, Halldisa Ketil’s-daughter.”

  You approached and sat next to me. “Good night, Vidar Odin’s-son. For I know for certain that is who you are.”

  “It’s true. There’s no point in denying it. I was sent from Asgard to persuade your family to leave.”

  “What does it feel like to be a god?” you asked.

  “I don’t know if I am a god. I know what it feels like to be Aesir. It feels like shame.”

  “You feel shame that you come from a great and powerful family?”

  I turned to you, impatient. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have thought about you all day.”

  “Because I am Aesir?”

  “Because you are Vidar. Because you have hard hands and soft eyes. I could fall in love with a man with such hard hands and such soft eyes,” you said. Then you burst into laughter and I found myself laughing too.

  “You speak very plainly,” I said.

  “I see no use in doing otherwise. Tell me, if Odin has only one eye, is he always bumping into things?”

  I laughed so hard I couldn’t answer.

  “And Thor? He must smell like a goat.”

  “He does. And has the manners of one.” Nobody had ever made jokes about my family before.

  “Heimdall’s beard, from the stories, must be long enough to trip over.”

  “Not yet,” I said, “but it prevents any of the ladies of Valaskjálf from finding his face beautiful, and so he is forced to observe them from afar.”

  “Your smile suggests the ladies do not know he watches them.” You leaned down and picked up a stone, which you skimmed across the water.

  “He keeps his hands occupied,” I said, and felt a wave of fear and guilt. I banished it. Nobody in Asgard could hear me now.

  You laughed and pushed your hair off your face. “It sounds just as petty and boring as families in Midgard.”

  “I would rather hear of your family,” I said. The chill air and the distant stars were already weaving magic between us. “I grow tired of thinking of my own.”

  “Mine are worse,” you said. “Isleif dragged us all here to be good Christians, but half of us still worship the old gods or nobody at all. He’d be appalled at some of the things I’ve done.” You raised your eyebrows knowingly. “Would you like to hear?”

  “Of course.”

  You reached inside your dress and pulled out a moonstone set in silver on a fine chain. “Thou shalt not steal,” you said. “I stole this back in Egersund, before we came on this hellish trip. It’s to remind me of everything I had to leave behind.”

  “Stealing is forbidden by your God?” I asked.

  “He’s not my God,” you replied. “He’s Isleif’s.” You held up a pale finger. “Thou shalt honor thy mother and father. I call my mother a fool and a coward, and if she had any mettle we’d be back home with all my friends, but Isleif is her brother and she quakes when he speaks. As for my father, well, he’s been dead six years, but he was a liar anyway.”

  I smiled at you. Your irreverence was gentle, not savage. Your voice was infused with warmth, even as you told your tales of mischief. “Any more?” I asked.

  You lowered your voice, pretended to look around for listeners. “Well . . . I don’t know if I should tell you . . .”

  “Go on.”

  “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” you said, “but I once lay with my cousin Asbjorn, on my sixteenth birthday.”

  New desire stirred within me. “You did?”

  “Just to see what it was like,” you replied lightly. “Asbjorn has since taken a wife. The three little girls you saw today are his. But he hasn’t forgotten.” You bit your lip to still a laugh. “I’m too wicked, aren’t I?”

  “You are far from wicked,” I said, thinking about my sins and what they amounted to.

  “Asbjorn is one of the most pious of Isleif’s followers,” you said. “No doubt his feelings about me are what leads him to press so hard that I marry Ulf.”

  “Who is Ulf?” I said, ready to tear out his heart.

  “One of the others. He’s too old and too pious for my liking, and Isleif would never force me.” You grew serious. “What of you, Vidar? Does your family try to marry you off?”

  “I have lived the life of a warrior,” I said carefully. “Marriage and children have not been spoken of.”

  “Though you must have loved?”

  I thought of all the women I had desired, how easily those desires had been satisfied, and how quickly the women were discarded. “No,” I said, almost surprised to hear myself say it. “I have never loved.”

  “Nor have I,” you said softly, “though I can imagine it well enough.” You leaned toward me and turned up your face. “If you kissed me . . .”

  I placed a hand on your hair, trailed the silky strands through my fingers. “You are so mortal, Halla,” I said. “I don’t understand you.”

  You
smiled. “I didn’t ask you to understand me. I asked you to kiss me.”

  Savage desire gripped me and I kissed you. You wound your arms around my neck and I pressed your body to mine, and it felt as vulnerable as a bird’s with its speeding heart and its fine bones. I was intoxicated and I felt myself letting go of my family, my past, my blood. I was free, after a lifetime trapped by the Aesir name.

  You pulled back and murmured against my cheek, “I think I am in love with you, though I only met you yesterday.”

  I thought about our first meeting, with Hjarta-bítr in my fist and Odin’s orders in my heart, and fear chilled me. “Halla, you must convince Isleif to go. I cannot safeguard you from my father, and he wants you all gone.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” you said.

  “And I’ll see what deal I can make with Odin,” I said. “Will you meet me again, here, tomorrow?”

  “I would meet you whenever and wherever you asked, Vidar.” You kissed me again, then climbed to your feet and, with a wave over your shoulder, headed home.

  I returned to Valaskjálf, but my father was too drunk to speak to me. I left word with one of his servants that most of the settlers were his worshippers, so I had not wanted to kill them and had chosen to warn them instead.

  “They will be gone before winter,” I called over my shoulder, eager to be back in Midgard with you. “Tell him he can trust me, tell him it’s all at an end.”

  But it was actually only the beginning.

  Twenty-Three

  I felt hope and I felt at liberty as I returned to Midgard the next evening. You had until winter to convince Isleif and his followers to go. And then? When you went with them? These feelings were still too new to me to understand, so I ignored the questions they provoked. Winter was many weeks away, the answer would come. I had time to spend with you, to test if my wild emotions would lose their brightness.

  I waited for you that night by the fjord, but you didn’t arrive. My disappointment overwhelmed me. I was angry and confused. The long night grew cold and still you didn’t come. When the first glimmer of dawn touched the sky, I cursed you as a harlot and pulled myself to my feet. Only moments remained for me to cross Bifrost, and I was heading into the trees, whistling for Arvak, when you came running up the bank of the fjord.

  “Vidar, wait!” you called. Your cheeks were flushed and your eyes watered from the cold morning air.

  “I won’t wait any longer, Halldisa Ketil’s-daughter,” I said, “for I have waited all night.”

  “You waited all night?” you said. “Really?”

  “And you did not come, so now I will return to Asgard while some dark still stains the sky.”

  “No, don’t go.” You caught your breath. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t get away. I share a cabin with my mother and three of my idiot cousins. I intended to leave as soon as they were all asleep, but Olrunn has been vomiting all night and whining and moaning and wouldn’t let me go.” You nodded, that mischievous smile finding its way back to your face. “I believe she is with child to my brother Hakon, although they are not husband and wife. Perhaps when Isleif realizes how much adultery is being committed on his island, he might throw his hands in the air and leave without my persuasion.”

  I was still angry, but not sure how to express it.

  “Come. Vidar, don’t be so cross.” You took my hand. “I wanted to come. I thought about you all night, and all day yesterday too. You look so grim. Perhaps you are too used to getting your own way?”

  I found your irreverence beguiling. You charmed me, you fascinated and intoxicated me. “Halla, before I came to Midgard, I can’t remember the last time I laughed.”

  “I’m glad you find me amusing,” you said. “Would you allow me to amuse you this morning?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Come. Let’s walk in the woods. You can tell me stories about your brothers.” You held out your hand and I closed it in my own.

  “First, tell me that you warned Isleif to leave the island,” I said.

  We moved into the trees, leaving the mission and the cold water behind. “I mentioned it. He wouldn’t listen.”

  “You must keep trying.”

  “You have not reckoned with Isleif Grímsson,” you said. “He is determined to live out his days here, and he is determined that we all die of boredom along with him.”

  “But you must—”

  “I will keep trying, Vidar.”

  “You only have until the winter. Odin expects you to go or he’ll . . .”

  You let the silence stretch out a few moments, then you stopped and turned to me. “What will he do, Vidar?”

  “He will have you all killed.”

  Your eyes held mine and I saw realization dim them. “Oh. He sent you to kill us, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “But you didn’t kill us.”

  “No. I couldn’t.”

  “Now I’m frightened of you, Vidar Odin’s-son.”

  Your words cut me deeply. “I would never hurt you, Halla.”

  “But that first time we met?”

  “I was armed. I intended to fulfill my duties. When I saw you, things changed.” I squeezed your fingers gently. “Everything changed.”

  We watched each other in the dark wood for a few moments, while the sky brightened behind me. Your eyes were intense, your brows drawn down, I could almost see your mind working. “I have been a fool,” you said softly.

  “I promise you, you can trust me.”

  “I believe that, Vidar, but what of the rest of your family? I have been a fool to take your kisses so lightly. You are something so different from me. You bring danger to us, unwillingly, but certainly. And I have behaved like a silly girl.”

  “I have enjoyed your laughter.”

  “Vidar, I will get Isleif to go. If I have to set fire to the church and all the cabins myself, I will get us off the island. Give me a few weeks to work on him.” You shook your head sadly. “I think that we should not speak again, you and I.”

  The first sunbeam broke through the canopy and speared the ground beside you. Your hair was lifted by a morning breeze, which sent leaves spinning in its wake. The thought of never seeing you again hurt me, as though one of my brothers had punched me between the ribs. I gasped. “Halla, I would see you every day of my life.”

  You couldn’t help yourself, you smiled, tried to bite your lip to keep it in check. “You flatter me.”

  “I love you.”

  “Can you be certain?” You pulled your hand out of mine. “Is it worth the trouble?”

  “Halla, I—”

  “You’re not used to talking of your feelings. Let’s not mention it again. Let’s spend the day together as though the whole world is on our side, then when night falls we can think about this some more. About what is the sensible thing to do. I’m a sensible girl, Vidar. You should remember that.” You touched my cheek lightly. “You are not to say you love me again until you are very, very certain. And nor shall I.”

  That day was bliss. We walked in the woods, we rode Arvak, we built sand houses on the beach, and you made me laugh over and over again. I tried to match your humor with my own with very little success, until you cried laughing every time one of my jokes failed. I had never seen anyone cry laughing before. Your face flushed pink and hot tears rolled down your cheeks and settled in the upturned corners of your mouth, waiting for me to kiss them away.

  Your soft skin seemed to beg for my lips to press it; your body sizzled with an irresistible sensual energy, so that my hands were useless for any other task but smoothing its contours. You forbade me, however, from knowing it the way your cousin had known it. Once again, you cited your sensible nature. “You may be gone at the end of the day, Vidar. Or at the end of the week. Next time I lie with someone, it will be every night, forever.”

  Every night, forever.

  I had never been so enchanted with an idea. To have you by me, enclosed in my arms, as I fell asleep
each night, your warm, scented hair and soft cheek on my pillow in the morning was the only bliss I could imagine. My life before you seemed bled of all its color. Empty, violent, brainless. I knew then, with great certainty, that I did love you, and I knew this meant I would have to reason with Odin. Then I would bring you back to Asgard with me, make you my princess, build a little house on the shores of the bay, far from my family.

  So as the sun dipped once again into the sea, I held you and I swore to you that I loved you, for certain, forever.

  “Is that wise, Vidar?” you asked me. Your eyes were hopeful, trusting.

  “I don’t care if it’s unwise,” I said. “I have done everything my father has ever asked of me until now, and that must count for something. His quarrel is with Isleif, with Isleif’s God, not with you.”

  “Let’s not proceed in haste,” you said. “We have time. We have weeks and weeks until winter is here. If we spend every hour of every day together, perhaps we will get sick of each other and there it will all end.” You were laughing as you said this, and your laughter lightened the dark wood and the foreboding ocean and filled me with hope.

  I often wondered if Isleif and the others suspected what you were doing in the weeks that followed, for you were hardly ever at home. You met me in the morning and you sometimes didn’t return home until sunset. When I asked, you waved the question away and said that Isleif didn’t care what you did as long as you prayed every morning. The season grew cold and damp, and so I built a tiny cabin in the woods for us, and a shelter for Arvak. I had little inclination to return to Asgard, and the longer I was away, the weaker grew my ties to the Aesir. I confessed all their sins to you, and some of mine too. I was ashamed of my past, and felt certain that you would reject me or, worse, fear me once you’d heard of it.