And all my mother came into mine eyes. And gave me up to tears.

I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Angels, and ministers of grace, defend us!

Not mad, but bound more than a madman is…

The Saga of Neils and Susan

Sue stood in the exam room before her husband, surprised that she was blushing. She looked up at Neils, cheeks red with nerves and desire, she felt that she and Neils were about to do something very special. She felt that the opening of her body to her husband was really the opening of a door, an invitation for a very special “something” to enter their lives.

Neils stood before his young, beautiful wife in that coldly clinical exam room feeling that this was the oddest place in the world to have sex with one’s wife. If he had only known how many couples had used this very room for this very purpose, he may have felt more at ease.

He fixed Sue’s perfectly blue eyes with his own green eyes, caressing her left cheek with his right hand. She looked exactly the way she had on their wedding night; small, frightened, eager, terrified and hungry all at once. Neils lifted the hem of his wife’s dress, without saying a word to her. He hooked his thumbs around her panties at her hips and slid them down just enough to get the access he needed.

He hoisted his wife on to the table, lay her on her back where she pulled her knees toward her chest. Sue had not felt this vulnerable during sex in quite some time, but it was that feeling of weakness and vulnerability that gave her butterflies in her stomach. Neils unzipped and, while pulling himself out of his boxer-briefs, looked down at his wife’s exposed vulva with a mixture of rapacity and worshipful awe. He then decided that she would not be needing her panties for the rest of the day and, so, removing them, put them into his back pocket. Neils had known many beautiful women in his life, though had slept with none of them, they were all moldy sink sponges compared to his wife. He entered her and was taken to another realm. He saw angels and fireworks, cloudy-blue skies and geometric shapes spread out before him. But what he was most aware of was the music. It was a music beautiful and intense; soft and melodic; music filled with a thumping bass-line while being, simultaneously, a barely audible drone. The music came, asked him to dance and would not take “no” for an answer. Sue, of course, knew none of this. She could only close her eyes, concentrate on, and enjoy, the feeling of her husband inside of her.

Neils had become very outwardly quiet as he entered his wife. This was not characteristic of him as he was given to spontaneous grunts and groans at the mere touch of his wife. At first, Sue thought that Neils was self-conscious, their being in a doctor’s office and all. Then she opened her eyes, just slightly, just enough to peep through her lashes to see her husband’s face. His face, which should have been screwed up in an expression of what might look like pain under any other circumstances, was calm, serene. He seemed to be grooving, yes, grooving to a tune only he could hear. His head, shoulders, torso, and, most important, his penis were following the groove of this silent song.

From what Sue could feel, this song had a very strong, insistent beat. It was voracious, hungry, clawing and possessive and it was sending Sue to places that Neils had not previously taken her. He was an expert and very enthusiastic lover at the worst of times, and at the best, he left Sue, and himself, a spent, sweaty mess on the sheets. Today, though, today Neils was alchemic in his transformative powers.

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“You really ought not be looking, you know.”

“I know. But haven’t you ever been curious about how they do this thing?”

“What thing is that?”

“You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. Human sex. It’s how they open the door for some of us to go to their place.”

“Not all of us want to go.”

“I do. I am.”

“Well, it sounds dreadful. It’s messy and usually noisy and it’s not always as much fun as it looks. A great deal of the root of human misery can be found in the soil of “sex”. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

“That’s the way that He set it up, there must be some merit to it.”

“I am not questioning His wisdom. I am, however, hoping and praying that He never asks me to go through that particular door.”

“Yeah, His “asks” are not really asks, are they?”

“Not at all.”

“Ok, they’re getting down to it. Have you seen my headphones?” the Angel Asgeir asked.

His mentor extended his empty hand, gave the young angel a look of mock disapproval, and the headphones appeared in his palm. “You can do this, too, you know.”

“I know. I just like watching the look on your face when you do it.”

The Angel Asgeir, for that was his name as an angel, put on his headphones, plugged the other end into an invisible jack that was some twelve inches to his left, leaving the plug-end of the headphones hanging in mid-air. His favorite music played in his ears, a confluence of nineteen-sixties British Invasion rock, baroque and American-style Southern rock. There was quite a bit more to it, but the music this angel was listening to was much more than what came out of the headphones, which, strictly speaking, were not necessary. This strange combination of music came out of the tiny speakers, swirled around in his head, mixed with his thoughts, his experiences, his desires and fears to produce sounds that were unique to him. The Angel Asgeir then funneled these sounds through conduits built into God’s creation so that they ended up in the mind of Neils Joergensen, his soon-to-be-father, mixing with his own thoughts and experiences to create his own unique sounds.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Neils also opened his eyes just enough to see his wife’s face bathed in sweat, a look of passionate docility in her expression. Her hands had reached up to grab his forearms to pull herself as close to him as possible and hold herself there.

Some fifteen minutes into this scene, Neils’ thrusting was becoming more and more frenzied and his breathing was becoming very shallow. With a yell, he sent forth semen into his wife and collapsed forward, his head on Sue’s belly. Sue ran her fingers through his close-cropped hair. Unable to form coherent sounds, all she could do was laugh and sigh. She was a satisfied woman.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back on the other side, Asgeir’s mentor said, “That’s your cue. Are you ready?”

“Is anyone ever ready?”

“No. But you have a bigger job than most. You will have friends, though. They will help you. They’re family. Besides, this assignment is for only sixteen of their years. Short, even by their own standards.”

“So, I guess I’ll see you soon, Gabe. Any last words of wisdom?”

“Yes. Be in their world but not of it.”

In that instant, the headphones that were not really necessary fell down to a floor that was not really there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sue sat in an oak rocker facing a large, a very large, bay window in a large wood-paneled room, crackling fireplace to her left, peacefully nursing her son. Outside, on the sprawling grounds, trees dropped their leaves like confetti being thrown at a parade in honor of the new arrival. Sometimes the wind would kick up some leaves and dust and dance with them. When that happened, Sue could almost see the outline of a figure, a form, a person as if refracted through the lens of air and dirt and leaves. At these times Sue felt a warm comfort in what she saw and, for reasons she could not articulate, felt even closer to her infant son. The shapes that she thought she saw seemed to be bringing a message of safety and protection for her and her baby.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sue stood in the doorway of that same room watching her twelve-year-old son sitting in that same rocker, book in hand, ignored for the moment, staring into that same yard watching the wind dance with the leaves and the dust.

“What are you looking at, sweetheart?”

“Oh, nothing, really, mom. Just some friends who stop in to see me from time to time.”

“Really? Do they say anything to you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Are they saying anything today?”

“Yes.”

“Well, silly, what are they saying to you?”

“Read Genesis 3:19.”

“That’s odd, honey. Is that what you’re doing?”

“Yes.”

“Honey, please don’t drag this out for me. You know what I am asking for. What does it say?”

“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

“Asgeir, that’s not very pleasant reading on such a beautiful day as this.”

“Sorry, mom. It’s really ok. It’s not going to happen for a while and my friends come to tell me that they will be with me when it does. I’m really ok.”

“What’s going to happen? What are you saying?”

Asgeir looked up at his beautiful mother from his rocker and simply cocked a brow as if to ask, “Must I explain it again?”, but said nothing.

“Honey, I do not want you to speak of those things! You are my miracle-boy and I will not lose you! If anything were to happen to you, I would die, too!”

In Norwegian, Asgeir said, “I know mom, I’m sorry. My imagination goes crazy, sometimes. You wanna sit next to me for a while and read from the Arabian Nights? I’ll switch chairs.” Asgeir got up and sat in the over-stuffed chair next to the rocker, wrapping himself in his blankets as he did so.

In her chest, Sue’s heartfelt full to bursting. She and her miracle-boy had sat by this window throughout his young childhood reading the Tales of the Arabian Nights while Neils sat at a desk nearer the hearth, briar-wood pipe in his mouth, writing his sagas, occasionally looking up to listen to his perfect wife read to his perfect son. Today, Neils was out around the island or maybe even on another island in the archipelago, and Sue felt his absence.

Asgeir had told a little fib about his imagination getting the better of him, and his mother knew it. She knew that he was not telling her the truth to spare her feelings and Asgeir knew that his mother knew. They each played their part for the other. It was just easier this way. Asgeir’s conception and birth had been a miracle, but the miracles did not end there.

A few months after Asgeir had been born, Sue moved her parents from Norway to North Island. They were older than most parents of a young woman her age and her father was having several health problems. With their money, Sue knew she could take both her parents to the finest medical facilities in the world and she was much more at peace knowing that they were under her husband’s roof. Besides that, Stig Kristiansen and Neils were extremely close. Stig was just like Neils’ own father and Neils liked having them around.

One day, when Asgeir was about three, Sue came down from the bedroom she shared with her husband to sit with her father in front of one of the hearths so that they could chat and watch TV and eat a little something. When she got to the sofa where her father was sitting she screamed for her husband and mother who were in other parts of the house. Her father sitting in his usual spot was white as a sheet. When Sue touched his cheek, it was cool. She ran to find Neils passing her little son on the staircase going up as he was going down. She grabbed him in her arms while he squirmed to get free.

“I’ve got to go get Morfar! Let me go! I need to get Morfar! He needs me!” and with that, the child squiggled from his mother’s grasp and ran to where his mother’s father, or Morfar, was sitting. Sue let him go. She found Neils in one of their large showers standing under the hot water looking as if he might never come out.

“Neils! Neils! Papa is dead! My father is dead!”

“What?! This can’t be! We were just cutting wood this morning! He seemed fine then!” Neils said as he turned off the water, drying himself with a large towel then wrapping around himself. He ran from the shower down the stairs skipping three and four steps at a time with Sue not very far behind. When they got to the room where Sue’s father sat, Sue gasped then fainted. Little Asgeir sat in his Morfar’s lap, the older man as alive and warm as he had ever been, but looking a little surprised at his son-in-law standing in front of him in a towel and his daughter sprawled on the floor at her husband’s feet. Neils lifted his wife from the floor and laid her on the sofa with her feet just about in her father’s lap.

“Stig! Sue came screaming into the shower telling me that you were dead! What’s going on?!”

The older man was quiet, not knowing quite what had happened to him nor how to describe any of it.

Stig Kristiansen looked rattled. When he was upset in any way he went back to his Norwegian.

In Norwegian, very haltingly: “Neils, I was taken away by Skadi. I was sitting here waiting for Susanna to bring some food so we could watch TV and talk. Neils, my blood felt like it became molasses in my veins. Skadi was standing right there where you are now. Then, I was gone and she was dragging me away to where she lives. She was going to eat me, Neils, I know it. I’m sure you don’t believe me, but it’s true.”

Neils listened with genuine concern. Since marrying Sue, or Susanna, as her parents called her, he had become Christian, but the old beliefs were dying hard. Neils had had dreams where Christ had come to him and told him that interpreting the world and Christ, himself, through the lens of Norse religion was perfectly fine and that he should not worry about such things if it helped him navigate the world. Christ had also told him that the world of the Norse Gods was more real than Neils really knew and that Neils was going to be his man to enter those realms one day to do battle for the forces of the Heavenly Host. Neils had dismissed the message of the dream as just that, the nonsense of dreams. Now, however, as he listened to his father in law, Neils wondered if this was the beginning of that dream coming true.

“Stig,” Neils said in measured tones, as he moved to the sofa, lifted his wife, who had become conscious but was listening intently, and sat so that Sue could curl up into his arms, “I do believe you. Our Old Ways, our myths and legends are not so mythical,I believe. So, what happened after that?”

“I’m not sure I should even say what happened next, it’s so unbelievable, and I know how that sounds given the story I’m telling, but I will. I was resisting, but Skadi is so strong, a demon goddess and I could not stop her, when little Asgeir, here, shot up through the roof of this house and said, “Leave my morfar alone!”

“Neils, have you ever seen a Norse demoness shit her pants?”

This last remark made Neils laugh almost despite himself. “No, Stig. No. That’s something I have not seen.”

“Well, son, I have. Skadi took one look at my boy and the fear on her face was something to behold. She let go of me and fled to who knows where in a flash of light. Asgeir took my hand and said that it was time to go home and that I needed to stay around for a long time to come”

That exchange happened completely in Norwegian, so what happened next was the strange icing on a very weird cake.

Asgeir had been sitting on his grandfather’s lap, his head on the man’s shoulder, looking as if he was asleep when he piped up and said, “Morfar needed me so I saved him.”

This little quip made Sue sit up and Neils turn toward his son. “What did you say? Did you understand what we were saying?”

“Yes, papa. I understood. And I said that morfar needed me so I saved him. Did I make a mistake, daddy?”

Neils reached across his wife and lifted Asgeir onto his lap. “No, my beautiful boy, you did not make a mistake. You did a very brave thing. I just wish I understood it. When did you learn to speak in the old tongue?”

“I learned a long time ago, daddy, before you and mamma and even morfar was borned. I thought you knew that.”

“I guess I forgot. Daddys sometimes forget things. But I don’t think that I’ll be forgetting this again.”

“I want to know what was going on. I was dead, that I know, and that Susanna can confirm. The rest felt as real as any of this”, Stig said gesturing toward the room.

That was the second miracle of Asgeir’s young life, the first being his conception in the first place. So, as Sue read the tales of the Arabian Nights to her son, he fell into a deep sleep and dreamt of battling demons and fighting evil. His mother would have been terrified to know that in a few years, the very real battle would be brought to her doorstep.

Copyright 2018 by Andrew Payne