Andrew Davidson - The Gargoyle

Einarr never once lifted a hand to Svanhildr until she collapsed, and then he raised it only to reach out to her. The moment his open palm touched her, she jerked away, and he knew not to try again.

The following morning, the longhouse was little more than a blight of glowing embers strewn among the foundation stones. Others had arrived-farmers, Vikings, tradespeople-and had begun to comb the ruins. Einarr wanted to do anything but this, but knew he must.

He headed to the spot where the dragon cradle had last sat, but it was no more: there was only a pile of burnt sticks, and one smoldering dragonhead post that had not been incinerated with the rest.

A cry went up from one of the searchers: Sigurðr’s body had been found. It was not where the beating had occurred, but perhaps a dozen body lengths away. The corpse was so badly charred that Einarr could not even recognize it as his friend; it was the shape of a human body, but melted to the bones.

The sight sickened Einarr, but the location puzzled him. Rather than heading for the door, Sigurðr had pulled himself into the corner of the house where the water trench ran. This might have made sense if the opening was large enough to escape through-but it was far too small. Sigurðr hadn’t even opened the floorboards; he lay on top of them.

There was a noise.

Einarr and the men standing around the scorched body looked from face to face, as if to confirm that they were not mad, that there was indeed sound coming from a dead man.

Soft. A whimpering.

Underneath. The noise was coming from below the floorboards.

Two men pulled Sigurðr’s remains to one side, the skull puffing out a breath of ashes, and Einarr began ripping up the planks. They were scorched but not burned through; it was clear that Sigurðr’s body had acted as a buffer against the flames. When the boards were removed, Einarr saw that there in the flowing water, wrapped in his swaddling blanket and tied securely with Sigurðr’s arrowhead necklace, was the newborn. The child Friрleifr was shivering and half submerged, but alive.

Einarr scooped his son out and held him tighter than he ever had before.

In the days that followed, Einarr and Bragi spent all their time at Sigurðr’s favorite fjord, digging a massive hole. When it was large enough, they enlisted the help of the Viking crew to carry Bragi’s boat-the one that Sigurðr had painted so brilliantly-to the gravesite. While it was being lowered, some of the Vikings grumbled that Sigurðr was not so important a warrior as to deserve such a fine boat grave, but no one dared speak such a thought aloud. They simply left Einarr and his family to bid farewell to the man who had saved their child.

Beside Sigurðr’s body in the boat, they laid a number of items: his favorite frost-cup and the household’s ale-goose, both pulled from the ashes; his paintbrushes and pigments; Sigurðrsnautr; and the single unburned dragonhead from Friрleifr’s cradle. Then Svanhildr removed her treasure necklace and placed it gently across Sigurðr’s withered chest, keeping only the healing rune that he had given her.

Svanhildr and Einarr also considered placing the arrowhead necklace into the grave, but ultimately decided against it. It would go to Friрleifr, a talisman to protect the child as he grew into a man.

Einarr filled in the grave by himself. Bragi and Svanhildr, the baby clutched tightly to her bosom, stayed with him as he worked through the night. Just as the sun was rising, the last shovelful was put into place and Einarr slumped exhausted, to look out over the ocean at the sun rising like the condemning eye of Урinn. The boy Bragi had fallen asleep and Einarr, unable to keep the awful truth to himself any longer, confessed to Svanhildr how the fight had started.

When he was finished, Svanhildr touched her husband for the first time since the longhouse was burning. She couldn’t offer any words of forgiveness, but she took his hand into her own.

“I don’t know why I did it,” said Einarr, tears running down his face. “I loved him.”

They sat not speaking for a long time, Einarr weeping, until finally Svanhildr spoke. “Friрleifr is a good name,” she said, “but perhaps not so good as Sigurðr.”

Einarr squeezed her fingers and nodded, and then broke into new sobs.

“It is proper that we never forget,” said Svanhildr, looking down on the sleeping face of the rescued baby at her breast. “From this day forward, this child will carry our friend’s name.”

Keeping a low profile is not easy for a burn survivor at the best of times, but it becomes exponentially harder when he is in a fabric store with a wild-haired woman holding up swaths of white cloth against his chest, measuring out the proper amount for his angel’s robes.

When it came time to pay, I stepped between Marianne Engel and the cashier, thrusting forward my credit card. Funny the sense of independence it inspired, given that payment would ultimately come from one of her accounts anyway. Still, I could live with the illusion.

After we had procured all our costume-making supplies, we ran a rather strange errand to a local bank. Marianne Engel wanted to add my name to the access list for her safety deposit box, and the bank needed a signature sample to complete the request. When I asked her why she wanted it done, she answered simply that it was good to be prepared, for God only knew what the future might bring. I asked whether she was going to give me a key for the safety deposit box. No, she answered, not yet. Who else was on the list? No one.

We went to a coffee shop to drink lattes with no foam, sitting on an outside deck while Marianne Engel educated me on the Icelandic version of Hel . Apparently it is a place not of fire but of ice: while English speakers say that it’s “hot as Hell,” Icelanders say helkuldi, “cold as Hell.” This makes sense: having spent their entire lives hammered down by the frigid climate, how could they fear anything more than an eternal version of the same thing? For the burnt man, might I add, it is particularly attractive that the notion subverts the Judeo-Christian idea that the means of eternal torment must be fire.

That Hell is tailored to the individual is hardly a new idea. It is, in fact, one of the greatest artistic triumphs in Dante’s Inferno: the punishment for every sinner fits his sin. The Souls of the Carnal, who in life were swept away by the gusting fits of their passion, are in death doomed to be carried on the winds of a never-ending tempest. The Souls of the Simoniacs, who in life offended God by abusing the privileges of their holy offices, are doomed to burn upside down in fiery baptismal fonts. The Souls of the Flatterers spend eternity buried in excrement, a reminder of the shit they spoke on Earth.

It made me wonder what my version of Hell-if I believed in such a thing, that is-would be like. Would I be doomed to burn forever, trapped inside my car? Or would Hell be a never-ending stint on the dйbridement table? Or would it be the discovery that when I was finally able to love, it was already too late?

As I contemplated this, I spotted one of my secret fraternity coming down the street. It was a strange feeling, the first time that I’d seen another burn survivor in public, and one whom I knew, no less: Lance Whitmore, the man who’d given the inspirational talk at the hospital. He came directly to us and asked whether we’d met before. I couldn’t blame him for not recognizing me, because not only had the contours of my face changed while healing, they were also hidden behind my plastic mask.

“It’s nice to see one of us out in the daylight,” he said. “It’s not that we’re ghosts, exactly, but we do a pretty good job of not being seen.”