Kama. Terese Brasen

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      SUN MONTH KIEV 934 CE

      From the steps of the Big House where the two girls sat, it was possible to see past the market commotion through the open city gates to the brown trail that sloped towards the blue water, where the ships had docked.

      The horses came first—only five this time. At the gates, the riders stopped and dismounted before the statue of the god Freyr. Kama couldn’t hear the voices but she knew the prayer her father and his men would offer: “O my Lord, I have come from a far land and have with me slave girls, furs, spices, wine, cloth, swords and silver. Send me a merchant who will buy from me whatever I wish and will not dispute anything.”

      The horses crossed in front. Their elegant legs stepped over the stones. Hooves clanged against the ground right in front. So close. An acrid smell like urine mixed with peppermint fanned over the porch.

      Kama closed her eyes.

      The routine comings and goings along the Dnieper River told her she was safe. A system existed. The gods determined day and night, ice and fire, but men like her father cared for the kingdom of middle earth.

      Now a steady procession trudged up the trail. Stooped backs supported heavy packages. Teams handled boxes, one person each side grasping the goods that would soon attract curious buyers.

      Past the Big House, the market square was almost empty but already noisy with scraping, clamoring and hammering, as the side shed opened and closed, as boards and sawhorses were dragged in place and stalls assembled, as hammers tacked burlap skirts to table edges.

      “Inga,” Asa yelled.

      “What now?” Inga shouted to her stepmother. She needed to distance herself from the shapeless form who reeked of fish. Inga spat out a sunflower shell. In the fall, Asa collected decapitated sunflower heads and stored them as winter bird feed. Now a withered gray flower rested on Inga’s lap, and one by one, she was picking the seeds from the pockets, placing them between her teeth, cracking them open and spitting the discarded casing on the gravel just past her boots.

      “Get your ass over here and give me a hand,” Asa said.

      “Do it yourself.”

      “What if I have to take a pee?”

      “Pee yourself like you always do.”

      Inga was pushing back at the woman who had raised her and claimed her as a daughter. The two were clearly not related. A net hid Asa’s mousy hair. Fish blood stained her apron. But Inga was all Asa had to talk about. She hoped to convince customers who stopped by her stall that Asa was brave and mysterious—not just a fishmonger.

      Asa would say. “What have Freyr and his ugly sister Freyja done for us lately? Wake up and smell the bullshit. You need to keep your eyes open. One eye open, one eye shut, so it’s actually looking inside. That’s what I do, and that’s why I know when I’m being bullshitted. Not to be boastful. Just saying there’s more than meets the eye, and it could do you good to close one eye from time to time—like I do—and look at what’s down below, where there’s a shit load of layers until you get right to the bottom, where there’s real deep-down-under gods that don’t move about, but just stay put. Those are the gods I sing to. I close one eye and listen and then my body starts shaking and I let it all out, singing.

      “So there I was, just like normal—old Asa down by the river, eyes closed, shaking and singing—when screaming pierced the darkness. Let me tell you, these weren’t ordinary screams. Gave me the chills. Knew something wasn’t right. And that’s when I found her, lying right there on the rocks, a newborn child wailing. Which of course isn’t unusual, but this was different. This little one was meant to be among the living, so I picked her up, took her home and raised her as my own. Called her Inga because that was mother’s name. Runs in the family.

      “The world’s full of assholes who believe Freyja’s going to take her revenge because I took a child sacrificed to her, but Freyja’s a shit bag and I showed her.”

      Asa’s stories cast shame over the foundling. Critical eyes questioned Inga’s right to wander the streets of Kiev. “Makes me uncomfortable even having her around,” the women would say. “What kind of person picks up a stranger’s child? Bad luck, as far as I am concerned. There’s a reason children are left on the rocks. Who doesn’t know that? What belongs to Freyja is Freyja’s.”

      At her stall, Asa began chanting, “Asa, the fishmonger gets no thanks, gets no thanks.”

      “Why should I give you thanks?” Inga called, as she spat out a sunflower shell.

      “I saved you. I did.”

      “Who says I wanted saving?”

      And then Inga grumbled to Kama, “Can’t wait to be out of here.” Both girls agreed on that for different reasons—Inga because she clearly belonged somewhere else, Kama because Kiev was a temporary home.

      Now the morning was truly beginning. The sun ascended. Heat touched Kama’s linen shift. Vendors stacked opened crates under tables and sang, calling on the now steady influx of visitors to try a spoonful of honey, taste a candy or sample a new tea. Asa tended to her customers, slipping pickerel into sacs, wielding her knife to slice away fish heads and fillet white meat, guarding the hot grill where pike sizzled. Kama felt Inga’s tension and wanted to subdue it, because today should belong to Kama, daughter of Sigtrygg, who was the son of Gnupa and Astrid the Dane. Today Kama’s father, Earl Sigtrygg, had landed in Kiev. He and his men would rest here in the Big House for several months before setting off for Hedeby, but Inga couldn’t let go of her anger. Her brooding was dark and loud. She stared intensely at busy Asa, knowing that stories about her spiced up every purchase and enquiry.

      “Forget her,” Kama said.

      “Can’t.”

      “She’s a stupid bitch.”

      “Who’re you calling a bitch?” Inga said.

      “Thought you said she was.”

      “I can call her that, you can’t.”