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SUMMER
They went north before the summer crowds arrived. One town further up the coast, so that Freya’s Mum could keep her current job. Another house near the sea, but not on a cliff this time. The new house was in a run-down part of town, graffiti on many walls, litter blowing in the streets. It was too far to get to their old school, so Freya and Tammy had to change schools. There had been arguments before they moved.
“But why? I can walk to school,” said Tammy in an aggrieved tone.
“It’s over an hour on foot and we don’t have a car,” said Danae.
“Children in developing countries walk that far all the time,” said Tammy.
“You complain when you have to walk ten minutes,” observed Freya.
“I could catch a bus,” said Tammy.
“With what money?” asked Danae, putting her hands on her hips.
“I could get money.”
“With a job?”
“Maybe.”
“I’m not going to have you doing anything illegal, and that’s all there is for someone your age around here, at least out of harvest season. You’ll go to the local school.” Danae turned away from Tammy. Case closed. Tammy exited the room with a huff. But Freya couldn’t leave the subject yet.
“But Mum, I don’t want to leave here. Why do summer visitors get to move in, and we have to move out?” she said.
How do I feed Mr Fluffbum if I have to move away from Lio’s beach?
“Summer visitors will be paying more than us.” Danae’s lips pressed tightly together, as though she wanted to say more but was stopping herself.
“Can’t we pay more, too?”
“No. Not with your father gone.”
Freya hesitated, then asked in a small voice;
“Can’t Dad come back? I miss him.”
Danae’s eyes seemed to flame for a moment; she took a deep breath in through her nostrils. Freya stepped back, uncertain what to make of this reaction. Danae started speaking in an intense, upset voice that Freya recognised from her mother’s telephone arguments with her Dad.
“Your father will not be coming back. I told him when he left that if he was going to another woman, he could consider himself no longer part of the family. He’s spent the last three years having an affair under my nose, and I am not standing for it any longer. So no. I’m sorry you miss him, but he should have thought of his family before he went wandering.”
Freya opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. There was nothing she could think of to say, the hurt from her mother’s words spiralling into an amorphous ache in her stomach.
It was hard to settle into a new school. Few of their clothes had been rescued from the clifftop house, and they had no money for new ones. Freya found herself dressed in second-hand clothes from thrift shops once again - which she didn’t mind, except that the kids at the new school often recognised the clothes and teased her about wearing their cousin’s cast-offs.
Freya’s Mum spent more time drilling her daughters on plant recognition than on deity recognition, in the short period between her getting home and darkness falling. That puzzled Freya until she and her sister were sent out on their own to forage what they could from the countryside outside their town. With only one income, food was even less abundant than usual. Anything edible they could find added to their meals. In the weekends, Freya was pressed into helping her mother set up a new garden in the thin strips of soil around their new house. Somehow, nothing Freya planted managed to grow. Perhaps it was merely that her plantings were on the shadier, drier side of the small yard. Maybe it was something more.
“How come my plants never look like yours, Mum? I planted beans right next to your row, and none of mine have appeared.”
“Perhaps some mice found yours.”
And got full before they got to Mum’s row? Sure.
“But why is it always my plants that die?”
“I don’t know, Freya. Maybe your demi abilities aren’t plant-focused. You may have some other talent you haven’t identified yet.”
“But we need food. Everyone needs food. So why can’t I grow it?”
“How about you and Tammy go out foraging? There’s probably some hawthorns ripe by now.”
Freya went, feeling inadequate. What sort of descendant of a harvest and fertility goddess couldn’t grow food?
If only we didn’t keep moving, I might be able to get a part-time job to pay for a phone, thought Freya. Then I could use the phone to identify food plants, and I wouldn’t keep nearly poisoning us all. And we’d be less hungry, too.
Of course, what with all the extra-curricular schooling her mother put her through, she didn’t have much time for a job as well as school, even if jobs for young teens were available in their latest insignificant town. While the subjects she studied at home tended to be more interesting than those at regular school, that interest was offset by the hours her mother kept her at it.
“Mum, I think I’ll scream if I have to recite how to overcome frost giants once more. I know how to do it if I have to, OK? And it’s not like we even have frost giants here. They’ve all moved north, or out to Iceland, or wherever. I don’t need to know how to defeat a frost giant.”
“You’ll be happy when you come up against one and know what to do, though.”
“Can’t I learn how to make a cornucopia, instead? That would be more useful, Mum. We could use more food around the place.”
A horn of plenty would be awesome. No foraging required.
“I’ve told you before, I don’t have any Greek or Roman heritage. A cornucopia isn’t going to work for me. So, I can’t teach you how to make one. Your father might have known how, but he never told me if he did. Since he’s not here, we have to get food the hard way, by growing it ourselves or picking it. Now, since you mention Iceland and you know all about frost giants, tell me about the huldufólk.”
It seemed Freya was stuck with reciting Icelandic folklore this afternoon. She sighed dramatically, but complied. She probably shouldn’t have reminded her mother of her father’s heritage, however indirectly. Anything to do with her father, or his Greek heritage, made her mother grumpy. At least lessons meant she escaped the persistent drizzle outside. It did mean staying in the mouldy-smelling living room, however. Sometimes there were no good options. She sighed.
“Huldufólk are usually hidden. Some people call them elves, but others think elves and huldufólk are different. We don’t care which is which unless they are causing problems with humans...”
“And why does it matter which is which, Freya?”
“Umm. Some of them are good at growing things, I can’t recall which. Oh, that’s right, elves are smaller. I’ve seen a picture somewhere of a cat on some elf houses!” She stroked Mr Fluffbum, who was curled up beside her. He started purring.
“Oh Freya, you and your cats.” Her mother laughed; her grumpiness forgotten for now. “Alright, so elves are smaller. You’ll have to study up on what beings can help to grow things. That’s useful to know. What plant is considered to be a sign that elves are near?”
Freya made a face at her mother.
“You and your plants, Mum! It’s lords and ladies, isn’t it? That one with the leaves that look a bit like sorrel.”
“Yes, and you won’t forget that one in a hurry, will you?”
The memory of burning mouth and lips after biting into the leaves of that toxic plant one hungry afternoon was indeed etched into Freya’s memory.
“No. Never.”
“Right, moving on. You’ve covered what you remember about huldufólk, as little as that is; what about volcano gods?”
“Oh, Mum,” complained Freya, “volcano gods are even less relevant to me than frost giants. We don’t even have volcanoes in this country.”
“Not here, but plenty of other places in the world have them. And you know that where people go, their gods and the descendants of those gods go with them. Why, in the country I grew up in, volcano gods were so thick on the ground every tenth person was descended from one!” Danae was more animated than usual when she talked about her country of origin.
Freya rolled her eyes. She didn’t quite manage to escape her Mum noticing.
“Be polite, Freya,” said Danae sternly.
Tammy spoke up from across the room where she’d been glued to her phone all afternoon. Somehow, she managed to avoid half of their Mum’s grilling sessions.
“Come on, Mum, we know you come from far away, where the things invisible to see are different from here. You’ve told us often enough we could recite your story backwards.”
“Yeah, Mum. No volcanoes here, no volcano gods. Right?”
Their mother was clearly hurt, the corners of her mouth turning down, but she drew a deep, steadying breath.
“Just because you’ve lived in this country all your lives, doesn’t negate my experience. Also, people come from all over the world, so you could meet a volcano god or his offspring anywhere, not only near a volcano. And why are you still on that phone, Tammy? I told you to go read a book, or do your homework.”
Tammy sighed loudly and pointedly.
“All right, Mum. I’ll listen to a book. Reading’s too hard. I don’t see the point of homework though.”
“Tammy,” said Danae, a warning in her tone.
Tammy rose and went to dig her laptop out of her bag, flipping it open as she sat down again.
“Good. Now, Freya, sit still and tell me about volcano gods one more time,” said Danae.
Seeing her mother close to the edge of anger, Freya took a breath herself. Things were so different now, without their Dad. She missed him taking her out in the weekends. He always used to take them for chips on the beach. And every time, he ended up talking to dozens of people Freya didn’t know, but he seemed great friends with. She wondered for a moment if her Mum ever got to talk to other adults these days. Maybe not. Maybe that was why she spent so much time giving lessons to Freya and Tammy.
“OK, Mum. Here’s what I know...”
***
