Tigerlilja Read online

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  This book is a work of fiction. All characters and events contained herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarities or resemblances to actual persons or events are purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Erin Michelle Sky & Steven Brown

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. Address requests to [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-1946137081 (ebook)

  Cover art by Benjamin P. Roque

  Cover layout and interior design by Jordan D. Gum

  Ebook design by Dawson Cosh

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  t should have been impossible, but his mother was dying. She was tall and beautiful, still in the full health and vigor of her prime despite having lived more than a thousand years near the heart-spring of her magnificent forest.

  That, for dryads, was the way of things.

  She wore very little because she had no need of clothing, no matter the time of year. She slumbered in winter, when the sap ran slow and her forest lay silent. And she awoke each spring, pale as the moon, lithe and hungry and fertile. She blossomed through the summer, and by autumn she was full-bodied. Curvaceous. With skin of cinnamon gold. Her name was Taiga, and she was the object of every man’s desire.

  Every man, including Buri.

  Buri was the first-man. The man that the great cow, Audhumla, had licked from the ice. Grandfather to Odin. Great-grandfather to Balder, and Hermod, and Thor. Because he sprang from the ice, he held dominion over it. But the ice was receding from the world. And although men respected him, and even feared him, they did not love him.

  Not like they loved Taiga.

  She was the dryad of the far north—of pine and spruce and birch—and she protected the clan that lived there. Her trees gave the people warmth, and the animals that sheltered beneath their boughs offered plentiful hunting. Her bountiful forest swelled as the ice receded, seeding the great tundra.

  But the tundra belonged to Buri.

  Buri had tried, at first, to marry Taiga. If they were married, then it would not matter so much where his land ended and hers began. They would hold dominion over all the lands of the north together. And although Buri wasn’t big on sharing, he would have done almost anything to have her.

  Taiga, however, being a dryad, was wise to the ways of life.

  “No,” she told him. “You would tire of me. You think you would share, now, because your desire tells you this. But once you were sated, you would no longer feel so generous. If you were the sort of man to share with everyone—if you invited your sons to drink your mead and invited your grandchildren to share the meat of the tundra—I would believe you. But you share with no one, so I do not believe your offer, even if you believe it yourself.”

  This made Buri angry, but Taiga had been right not to trust him. Because Buri knew there was another way he could solve his problem.

  He could kill her.

  In fact, Buri had wanted to kill Taiga ever since. For if she died, her forest would die, and then he could reclaim all the northern lands for his eternal ice and snow. Unfortunately, soon after she refused Buri, Taiga had agreed to marry Pan, who was also one of the gods.

  That made things more difficult.

  Despite the stories, Pan was not ugly. Nor was he a goat from the waist down. Those are only lies that Buri told later because his jealousy had no bounds. In truth, Pan was exceedingly handsome. He walked the earth on the legs of a man, strong and full of passion, and he flew through the skies on the wings of an eagle.

  His magical pipes, inscribed with his name, shared the gift of music with the men and women of the north, but worst of all (as far as Buri was concerned) he added his own magic to Taiga’s, keeping her lands lush and vibrant, so she could stay with him forever.

  As for Taiga, she loved Pan with all her heart, and, one fine summer, Pan gave her a son, whose name was Peter.

  Peter was blessed with his mother’s beauty and grace, and with his father’s magnificent wings. If his fangs were a surprise to some, they were no surprise to Taiga, for she had felt his heart from the moment it first began to beat—wild, and brave, and free. From his father, he also received the gift of music, and the ability to converse in any language, even if he had never heard it before.

  But he did not inherit his father’s immortality.

  Instead, he had a touch of his mother’s dryad nature, but he was not tied to any forest in particular. So there was nothing to keep him alive forever. This made Taiga sad, for she seemed destined to remain eternally young while their son would grow up, and grow old, and pass into the next realm without them. So, once Peter had grown into a man, she turned to Pan for help.

  “When it comes time,” she told her husband, “you must let the forest fade. Let it wither, and I will fade with it. I will miss you terribly, but at least our son will not die alone.”

  Buri would have loved this solution, but Pan had no intention of letting either his wife or his son pass into the next realm, where he could not tread. So he turned to the other gods for advice, seeking a way to make his son immortal.

  First, he asked Freya, who was both wise and powerful.

  “That’s easy,” said Freya. “Just make sure he dies bravely in battle against an honorable foe, and I will carry him to Valhalla, where he will live forever.”

  It was not a terrible plan. But Pan was a god of music, and there were at least as many tragic ballads as there were songs of celebration. There was no guarantee regarding how his son would die, and he did not want to leave things to chance.

  So he went to visit Thor, who was both strong and brave.

  “You have nothing to fear,” boasted Thor. “I will watch over Peter every day of his life until death comes for him, and, when it does, I will bash its head in with my hammer. Then death itself will be dead. Problem solved.”

  “Even if you could—” Pan began to say, but Thor scowled so darkly that Pan started over. “Even if you did, I mean,” Pan said, to which Thor nodded, “then death would never come again for any man or woman. It would not be long before there was nothing left to eat, nothing left to drink, nowhere left to stand, and there would be no relief from that suffering.”

  Thor shrugged. “You only asked me to solve one problem,” Thor reminded him. “I solved it. Now, I’m thirsty.”

  So Pan went to visit Odin, who was the wisest of all. (As it happened, Loki was closer, but Pan knew better than to ask Loki. Everyone knew better than to ask Loki. Asking Loki was no better than asking Hermes, who was Pan’s own father and who had not been invited to the wedding.)

  “What will be, will be,” said Odin, who had traded one of his eyes for the ability to see what others could not. “I have already foreseen it. You will find your answer, and you will remain with your wife forever, just as you wish. But I can not tell you how, or it will not come to pass. Are you certain this is what you want?”

  “With all my heart!” Pan replied.

  “Then go ask Buri.” And that was all Odin had to say.

  Pan knew Buri’s history with Taiga, so he thought Odin’s advice more than a bit strange. But he trusted Odin, so he went to find Buri anyway.

  “You want me to what?” Buri asked, incredulous.

  “I want you to make my
son, Peter, immortal. Odin said you could help.”

  “Well, I am the first-man,” Buri bragged. “I emerged from the ice long before you were born, and I can do much that others cannot. But why should I help you?”

  “I have no idea,” Pan admitted. “All I know is that Odin said you would. He said he had foreseen it.”

  “Did he?” mused Buri. “Tell me, what did he say, exactly?”

  “He said that I would find my answer, and that I would remain with my wife forever, just as I wish.”

  “Ah!” Buri exclaimed. “Well then. Come back tomorrow, and I will help you.”

  Pan went home and slept that night with his wife. He told Taiga all that had happened, and although she was just as nervous about Buri being involved, she saw no other hope for their son.

  When Pan returned in the morning, Buri held out a cup of tea for him to drink. It stank and it bubbled and it looked like bile mixed with the offal of a rotting goat.

  “But why am I supposed to drink anything? I’m already immortal,” Pan pointed out. He didn’t see how drinking that noxious mess was going to do anything for his son.

  “Because I told you to, and because Odin told you to listen to me,” Buri said, which wasn’t much of an answer.

  Pan narrowed his eyes at Buri, and then he scrunched up his face at the concoction. He brought it to his lips, but something in Buri’s expression reminded him a bit too much of Hermes—or Loki, for that matter—and the way he looked when he was up to something.

  Pan lowered his hand, and he took the tea to Odin.

  “Is this truly what you meant?” he asked Odin, just to be sure.

  “It is what I have foreseen,” Odin assured him.

  So Pan drank it and was immediately poisoned. He fell to his knees and tried to retch it out, but it was already too late. He looked imploringly up at Odin.

  “Believe it or not,” Odin said, “this will lead to what you asked of me. It is no ordinary poison. It will kill even you. Go home to your wife, but do not despair. You will gain the boon you seek.”

  So Pan stumbled home to Taiga, and she wept to see him weak and suffering. But he told her what Odin had said, and that gave her hope. After all, Taiga was a dryad. There were many poisons she could cure. She laid her husband on their bed and set about brewing the strongest antidote she knew, and when it was ready, she gave it to him to drink.

  It had no effect on Pan that they could see, but Taiga fell to her knees as soon as Pan drank it. Only then could she sense what had happened. Buri had cursed the poison so that anyone who tried to cure it would also fall under its spell. He knew that Taiga would try to cure Pan, and, this way, he could get rid of them both at once. Taiga crawled to the bed and lay down next to her dying husband.

  They were barely alive when Peter came home and found them.

  He cried out, rushed to the bed, and fell to his knees beside it. “What can I do?” he begged them. “I’ll go get help!”

  “No!” Taiga warned him. “You must not let anyone try to help us, or the poison will kill them, too.”

  “But you can’t die!” Peter protested, weeping openly. “You’re both immortal! I don’t understand! You’re supposed to stay with me forever!”

  “Bring me your father’s pipes,” she whispered.

  Pan, who lay beside her, was already beyond speaking.

  Peter raced around to his father’s side of the bed and retrieved his pipes from the table there, bringing them back to his mother at once.

  “Good,” she croaked, holding the small pipes in her hands. “Some magic yet remains.”

  “You can save him?” Peter begged her.

  His father’s eyes were sunken, and his skin looked like ash.

  “No,” she said. “But I can save you.” For she had realized how to make the rest of the prophecy come true.

  “There is an island,” she told him, “far from the things of man. I have held my knowledge of it sacred, telling no one, saving it for the clan that I have protected, in case my forest ever died. They will need it now. I gave them a sword many years ago, imbued with magic, to guide them. You must find it and take them there.”

  “What? But how?” Peter exclaimed. “I don’t want you to die!”

  “You must find the sword!” she insisted, her eyes wide. “You will know it when you find it. The clan holds it safe.” She reached for his hand and gripped it tightly, her beautiful mouth rimmed with green, bilious foam.

  “I can’t! My heart will break without you! I want to go with you!”

  “No,” she said again. “If your time ever comes, I pray to the All-father that you will go to Valhalla, not to the underworld. But until we meet again, at the end of all things, I can spare you this sadness.”

  She reached inward, finding the last of her own magic—the immortal part of her, that she could not live without—and she gave it to her son, binding his dryad nature to the island, so that as long as a single green blade of grass remained anywhere on its shores, he would not age.

  Then, with her final moments, she pressed his father’s pipes into Peter’s hands, and she reached for the last of his father’s magic, using it for one, final wish.

  “You will forget anything that ever has, or ever will bring you grief,” she said, and a wave passed through him, radiating outward from the pipes he clutched in his hands.

  But she had underestimated how much her son loved her, and how much he loved his father. Dryads, after all, knew very little about grief. She had not expected every single memory of her and of his father and of his entire childhood with the gods to break his heart in the moment she took her last breath.

  “Find the sword,” she whispered. “The clan keeps it safe!”

  He stared at her as she lay still, and then he wiped his eyes, wondering who she was. And why he had been crying. He looked down at the pipes in his hands, curious, and he noticed that they now bore his own name, Peter, inscribed in front of the name that had been there before.

  “Peter Pan,” he read out loud. “Well, that’s a fine name!”

  He had no idea what sword the woman had been talking about, or what clan.

  But finding it sounded like a grand adventure.

  igerlilja loved Mother, who was fierce and brave, and who taught her how to fight. And she loved Father, who had taken his own heart and wrapped it around her little finger in the moment she had first opened her eyes. She adored Vegard, her older brother, who could already hunt and fish, and who was so clever at carving small animals for her to play with. But she revered Amma, who was Mother’s mother, and who taught her the old ways.

  Tigerlilja had taken to the axe and to the bow and to the great outdoors like a fledgling takes to the sky. But from the moment Mother began trying to teach her the quiet things that required sitting still—things like weaving, or knotting fishing nets—Tigerlilja rebelled. She would fidget and squirm, grumble and cajole, and if none of those worked, she would plead silently to Father with large, sad eyes until she was allowed to run free again.

  “She needs to learn these things,” Mother finally complained to Amma, her lips tightening into a thin, frustrated line. “I don’t know what to do with that girl.”

  “Let me try,” Amma replied.

  “You? No, I couldn’t ask you. I can hardly contain the child myself. She’ll wear you out.”

  “We’ll see,” said Amma.

  The next day, Amma arrived in the middle of the afternoon with an old fishing net.

  “Come keep your Amma company. I get lonely working all by myself,” she told Tigerlilja, who was always happy to sit and visit with her Amma, at least for a little while.

  But Amma never told her anything about nets or knots or the importance of learning to sit quietly. She merely smiled and worked, and as she worked, she began to tell Tigerlilja stories.

  She told her about Thor, and Odin, and Loki. And she told her about Taiga’s forest, because Amma had descended from Taiga’s original people. (Amma often cl
aimed that her mother’s mother’s mother had seen Taiga once, and even spoken with her, long ago, but for Tigerlilja this seemed like just another myth.) And all the while, day after day, Amma’s nimble hands dodged and wove about each other, mending the knots of the old net while Tigerlilja watched. And listened.

  “Here, help me with this one,” Amma began to say, from time to time. “It needs younger fingers than mine. That’s right. In and around. Just like that. Oh, thank you. Yes, that’s a good one. Very good.” And then she would return to her story.

  So at the same time that Tigerlilja was learning how to knot rope into a fishing net (and, later, how to sew and weave and even how to tell someone’s future by casting runes), she was also learning about the gods. And about magic, which played an important role in most of Amma’s stories. But, most importantly, she was learning about herself. Because Amma’s favorite story, the story she told most often, was the story of the day Tigerlilja was chosen by the bear.

  It was Amma, Tigerlilja realized later, who made sure she remembered.

  Tigerlilja was six years old when the bear chose her, and, once done, it could not be undone. Father, Mother, and Amma all said so, no matter how much Mother worried. But that was the only thing they could agree on when it came to the bear.

  “Your father,” Amma would say, “was inside fetching his axe. He didn’t even see it happen. He thinks he saw it happen because his fear was so big, even after it was all over, that everything he imagined felt real. As real as…”

  Here, Amma would pause, eye Tigerlilja sideways, and grin.

  Tigerlilja would giggle and ask, on cue, “As real as what, Amma?”

  “Why, as real as this jerky!” she would finish.

  Or, sometimes, this fruit.

  Or this bread.

  Then Amma would laugh and produce whatever it was from behind her back—the jerky, or the fruit, or the bread (smothered in butter and dripping with fresh honey)—and Tigerlilja would gnaw on the treat happily while Amma returned to the story.

  “The bear was the largest I have ever seen—before, or since. When she reared up, she stood twice as tall as your father! And she walked straight into the middle of the village, acting like she lived there.”