The Voyage of Freydis by Tamara Goranson

Author:Tamara Goranson [Goranson, Tamara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008455705
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

In the morning, the sun skips across the water, twinkling brightly in the cool breeze. Finnbogi and Helgi instruct their oarsmen to row us out to open waters, and Greenland fades into a misty haze of rocky outcrops, bleak mountain peaks, and glacier fjords. At first the bobbing of the ship is tolerable, but after endless hours of seeing nothing but greyish-blue water melding into the flat blue skies, I grow bored.

For days we travel in favorable winds before catching sight of land. As the seagulls circle around the mast, the crew cheers wildly and I allow myself a crooked smile. There are hundreds of seabirds soaring over cliffs silhouetted black against the setting sun, a hazy orange-red orb reflected in the glassy sea. Finnbogi advises that we set down anchor for the night just offshore to avoid having to navigate the rocks when the crew is tired.

That night I dream of red-faced skraelings capturing and burning me alive. I watch them eating my roasted flesh and crunching on my brittle bones, smiling at me with Thorvard’s face. I wake gasping. My throat is parched and my back is drenched in sweat. In the dim light cast from the rising sun yawning hazy shades of purplish pink along the horizon, I study the silhouetted forms of the sleeping Norsemen sprawled across the deck. Olaf Goðthjælpsen, the blacksmith, is keeping watch with his back to me. Ignoring him, I breathe in the smell of the ocean air to clear my head.

Just as I am stretching widely to unkink the muscles in my legs, I hear an ethereal noise: a puff of air that bounces melodically across the sea followed by another bloated whoof that quickly fades into the quiet. Standing, I see nothing but an endless stretch of blue in the black pre-dawn light until I move to the gunwales and peer overboard. The ocean is so calm that I can see my reflection shimmying. For a long time, I stand peering across the water waiting to hear another swish of air. By the time it comes, the others are stirring.

“Look, o’er yonder,” Logatha whispers. I see nothing. A moment later she points to a patch of sea that sparkles in the rising sun.

“We are in whale feeding grounds,” I murmur breathlessly. Unknowingly, Olaf steps in front of me and blocks my view just as two of the gentle giants pop up to feed on krill. I wiggle underneath his arm and see them slip beneath the depths with their tails flicking water and curving gracefully, as if waving, right before they dive down deep.

“They are so near to land,” Finnbogi mumbles from the helm.

Again, we hear a deep, drawn-out puff of air that quickly fades into silence. It is so strange and mysterious that a shiver runs through me. A host of gods must be orchestrating this ocean concert for the mermaids and the selkies. Wildly I look around, searching for those seals in the water that can take on a human form, but I see nothing – just the water, the endless blue of it.

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