Free The Tricking of Freya by Christina Sunley

and dove her whole body under, headfirst. She disappeared for a long time.
I got worried and ran down to the water's edge. Finally she popped up, far
far out, and waved at me. I felt silly standing by myself on the shore, so I
waded in a bit. The water felt like a slippery new skin covering my feet and
legs. I gasped when it reached my crotch, then waded deeper until it licked
my armpits. I held my arms in the air and shivered. Large white clouds
hung in the sky and I thought of Birdie's dream, of Mama being trampled
under the puff of sheep. I looked for Birdie, but she was gone, under.
    "Birdie!" I screamed. A few seconds later she shot up behind me, shaking the water off her shoulders like a dog. "Do you like to float?"
    "I'm not good at floating. I sink."
    "Well if a giant like me can float I'm sure a little elf like you can too." She
placed her hands on my back and told me to lean backwards. The beach
dropped away, then blue sky, clouds, and sun tilted into view. The sun
burned a yellow hole in my eyes, so I squinted them shut. Birdie held me
with one hand at the base of my spine and one between my shoulders. I let
myself rest solidly in her hands, the water lapping over my midriff. "Think
air," Birdie said, and it worked, I started floating on my own, off her hands,
for just a few seconds. The sun felt hot on my body and I seemed to be drift ing, like it wasn't Birdie's hands anymore but the water itself bearing me up.
Brightly colored shapes floated into my mind: fragments of broken cups.
Mama curled into a comma on the water's surface. I snapped open my eyes
and tried to stand, my legs churned frantically for the lake bottom, but I
couldn't find it. Was I over my head? Then Birdie caught me by the waist
and set me upright.

    "You said you'd hold me!"
    "I was right here," Birdie insisted. "I'm right here."
    For lunch we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into triangles and
slurped orange juice from a red thermos. "Soon," Birdie predicted, "you'll
be floating like a boat and swimming like a fish. Did you know Freyja was
the daughter of a sea god?"
    The Freyja comment caught me off guard. My father had been an accountant, not a sea god, so I knew she wasn't talking about me. "Freyja who?"
    "Freyja who? Freyja who?" Birdie spat a mouthful of orange juice onto
the sand. She put her sandwich down and turned her full attention to me.
"The goddess Freyja, that's who! The goddess Freyja has no last name.
Hasn't Anna told you anything about your namesake?"
    I felt the same as when I'd admitted that I'd never eaten ponnukokur, as
if I'd gotten my mother in a kind of trouble I couldn't quite fathom. "I know
about Freyja. I just got confused is all."
    "What, exactly, do you know about Freyja?"
    It felt like a test and I couldn't think of anything. What had my mother
told me? Freyja is a goddess. Gods and goddesses are powerful and people
pray to them. I'd always imagined Freyja like Supergirl, flying over Iceland
in a red-and-blue cape, tiny people far below on their knees gazing up at
her, hands clasped in prayer. "She was super," I said.
    "She was super all right!" Birdie seemed pleased. "Let me tell you a few
things about Freyja. Would you like that?"
    I would. I lay on my stomach, my pale skinny legs parallel to Birdie's
long tan ones. When it got too hot we drifted down to the water and Birdie
held me while I floated, but I never stopped listening, not for a moment. In
those hours I forgot all about my crime.
    "Freyja's father," Birdie began, "was none other than the sea god Njord, master of wind and waves. Her mother was the earth goddess Nerthus, and
her brother was the fertility god Freyr."

    "But what was Freyja the goddess of?" I asked. I was sitting up now, legs
crossed Indian style on the edge of the blanket, sun hot on my shoulders
while I funneled sand from one hand to another like an hourglass.
    "Freyja," Birdie proclaimed, "was the goddess of many things. First of
all,