Yolanda was scouting ahead and had been gone since dawn. Jarngrimr paced the deck, in wool leggings, a Waterman fishing jacket, and captain’s broadshirt and piratical black tricorn hat.
She spied out her spyglass up atop the rigging, muttered to herself, and climbed down, her long, silky, nixen hair furling out like a nixie’s ruddy black mane.
She glimmered at me, hopping off the rigs and sails in gold black boots lined with polar bear fur, and grabbed my waist, hauling me up into her arms.
“I ache for a fight, dear Turiel,” Jarnja simmered, yellow fire in her violet black eyes.
I laughed, tickling her chin. “Jarnja, we must tie the rigging into half quarterstaff, and move the prow widdershins.”
“You know how to sail Naglfari?” she asked, inquisitive.
“I’m a quick learner. When Dominic was asking how to woo Yuriel, I asked him to teach me the Watermen Ways in return.”
Q
I could barely breathe as Jarnja crushed me in a headlock. I bit her wrist hard, drawing blood, and she yelped, releasing me. I rendered her into a half nelson, wrapping my thighs around her to pin her under me.She just sat there, smirking: “You like to be on top?”“We’ve – ugh – been sparring for two hours, Jarnja,” I choked, sweat dripping from my brow.“And we haven’t kissed yet,” she mourned playfully.Queen Jarngrimr stood, about to carry me, but I did an upper reap on her thigh, knocking her to the ground, and she wheezed as I crushed a foot on her ribcage.“Feisty minx,” Jarnja purred, grabbing my leg and slipping me down into the bed with her.“Let me go, Beast!” I laughed, losing myself. “I am bone tired, Queen.”She carried me to bed, laid me down, and began to brush my hair with an ivory comb.I threaded my fingers around
The Crane Wife - In which Queen Jarngrimr contemplates her love for TurielThey said I should have loved a crane wife, her bleedingout in snow, onto ivory ice, I would give her my cloak andshe would be the female Christ, her blood stain my kimono,and as I carried her home to rice paper walls, on bent back,she would sing the sister stars down, and those souls departedwould flock around me, and I would know something of the afterlife,offering up my pain and beauty to death, and as her wings marriedmy mind and marred my pain stains into something quixotic, I wouldquicken, and Hell would have no place in my palace, and I would makea thousand like her, all for one wish of peace, after Hiroshima bombedme quite starstruck and desolate, and the grave of the fireflies wept.They say I should have loved a crane wife instead.Bu
We were in Yolanda’s cozy bedroom - as cozy as a tiny berth twin bed in a ship of keratin and bone could be.The sea swelled, and I curled up under thick blankets in my girlfriends’ arms as she drew interlacing figure eights on my slim, muscled white arms. Dressed in linen nightshifts like the lindworm bride giving her wyrm prince a bath in milk and lye, we talked of quiet nothings, watching sleet fall onto the gray, bone graveyard of the Seething Sea.Skadhi’s Bow shined bright on the horizon, Northern Lights sparkling as the stars of our ancestors, the female Disir and male Alfar, spackled the black luxurious mane of Nott like white eggshell.“Do ancestors look down on us from above, Yola?” I wondered, wide eyed and curious as I watched Mani the Man in the Moon glow.“Yes. They all do, every one of them, good or bad, small or tall, woman or man, damned to Nastrond or handmaiden in Freida’s halls,” Yolanda
I awoke to a ghostly beam from Mani's boat, god of moonlight, piercing me. It is said he saved two abandoned children starving at their parent's well, condemned to eat dust and mud, and adopted Hjuki and Bil, brother and sister, as his fosterchildren. Now, they guided stars across the sky under sweet lipped, black haired Mani's gentle dozey watch, spilling sweet magick milk to feed cats of ink, whose paws and sweet tongues lapped the milky starlight up, causing darkness to ink out the ancestors.Without the cats of Nott, the night goddess, and the sun queen Sunna and night king Mani's esteemed mother, who she gave to Mani when he turned thirteen, the whole sky would be the milk of Audhumla, our sacred auroch who nursed forefather Ymir, whom Wotan, Loki, and Mymyr had slain to make all the Nine Worlds.Yolanda gently dozed, and I imagined all the Hakkonsdottirs and Ynglings - my mother's surname, supposedly sired by fertility and beer and rain god Ingvi with his wife Ga
It was daybreak, so early, the sky was tinged dawn pink, the snow seals froliced on icebergs out our tiny glass window, and a morning dawn chill had set into the berth.Yolanda fluttered her hazelwood eyes open. They always change, from hazel to bark to black. Her cinnamon skin smelled like frankincense and violets."Ten more minutes, my queen," I stirred, half awake, drunk off moonlight and her firm belly and middle sized breasts like a broodmare wolf that swell like a psalm under my nightshift.Yolanda drabbled awake, murmuring, cuddling - wanting.A violet flame lit in her eye, and she mussed my hair. "Little shieldmaiden... you just called me your queen," she teased, pecking my cheek.I looked deep into her eye. "You have always been queen of my heart..." I said sleepily, eyes fluttering closed as I listened to her heartbeat, reawakened by the amethyst godstone. "Oh Yola, stay with me all your days. Once this terrible war is over, and we have b
Yolanda and I sipped Shamayim coffee sweetened from the sugar mills of the South as Jarngrimr whistled a skaldic lay of Freida and Ottar the Boar. She seemed to fancy Hyndla, the dwarven giant crone who helped Freida and Ottar, once her human champion, now in her service immortally like Adonis in Meditteranea to Cybele. Jarnja sang of how Ottar and Freida met:Freida Rides OutTo be like the Great Sow, Mother of Battle.they say I have gold tears that hide smiles,my teeth are bright as tusks, my breasts bemountains, little one, my thighs crush menand as I strangle their necks, they grin,pour wine into my lap, and drink down blood.See me on the battlefied, bright armor shining,See me in the bedroom, resplendent as a pearl,See me High Seated, prophesying Valraven’s fall,Wotan may be Frenzy, but I am the Blade, see mecut the Norn’s hair and spin it on my fingers.
Jarngrimr sang us away:Freida and Ingvi rode out into the sun-dappled woods,bows and falcon-fletched arrows ahand, aback boars,the twins wore cloaks of wolf, fall was at its apex,the smell of loam and Nerthus’ autumnal perfume rosein mist like an intoxicating oracle past oak and ash.The Golden Twins were hunting the white hart, dashingthrough Vanaheim aback war sow and hog, spilling rubyblood of Ingvi’s sacred antlered stags, Freida saw aspiderweb woven of gold, and as Ingvi roasted the hartshe strayed in her feather cloak and moonlight dress toa dwarven hollow, where a soot-rough duergar smithed abeautiful bracelet shaped like the sun, Freida swelledwith gold-lust, for Gullveig is her witch-name, and themetal of morning and dawn is her domain. Freida spokewords of want to the blackened dwarf: “Lay with me thisharvest tide, and you shall mine gems and fin
A Winter’s TaleMei moves with her family to the hinterlands,where cold gods reign, and colder climes drawhoarfrost on her coal black hair.This is the first time the girl, barely a young woman, Has seen snow. The peaks of the mountains are likeicicles piercing the sky, and at night, the moonis the brightest she has ever seen, like a brightsilver coin, nestled at the crest of the ridges.One night, the Bear that Swallowed the Moon comesand bids her “Ride my back, Mei. I am Bei Ling,the Moon Incarnate, and I shall show you themajesty of my frozen kingdom.” It is a wooing of love, and Mei climbs aback Bear -they rush through pine and red panda up theslope, in his throat is the lunar disc, shiningevery time he growls or opens his mouth to speakin a tongue not human, but bestial. That night, Bei Ling digs her a bed of snow and mos