It’s important to marry someone, she said. Not because you need them to complete you or because you ought to be someone’s wife by hook or by crook. It’s just that worlds want to combine, they want to marry, and they use people to do it, the way you mix medicine in with something sweet, so it’s easy to swallow. That’s why we have to have all those silly things: a frilly dress and something blue and a bachelor party and a priest. Just so that a boy and a girl can live together and make babies? Posh. Because the big worlds inside us are mating, and they need the pomp.
Aunt Margaret talked like that a lot. She left a few days later to learn about Norwegian investment banking. When she had gone I picked a little bouquet of blown dandelions and stood next to my favorite maple tree in the meadow beyond our house and put my hand on its bark. I swore to love it forever.
The wind moved in its branches, and that was vow enough for me.
The Hrimthursar brought fermented milk and honey to the bachelor party.
Of course, that’s just what we call it, but it’s not your usualstrippers-and-gin-and-no-women affair. We don’t really know how to separate like that. So we were all there, girls and boys and grandfathers and grandmothers, lanterns strung up between the trees, big tins full of beer and yellow wine, and just about everyone with the means to make a good bit of noise. Lucas spun his double bass, Rose tweedled her flute, there was a drum section a dozen cousins strong—Evan and Lizzy and Katie thumping leather with the heels of their hands. Aunt Betsy squeezed her black cello between her knees. My mother grinned over her old guitar, picking out a little melody line, and Grandmother brought out her best violin. Me, I sing. It’s the only time everyone looks at me, even Margaret.
I sang about snow-maidens. The Hrimthursar, for the first time, smiled big and broad. Their teeth were frozen.
They were uncomfortable—they think it’s best to send the women off to make wedding bread while the men drink. They stood around with their clubs waiting for the ritual violence that comes with too much fermented milk, but instead Grandmother fiddled like a devil, her blue hair coming loose, her arms and knotted fingers still so strong. The stars above us were terribly bright, as bright as the lanterns, and Margaret danced in bare feet, her hair flying, her frothy violet skirt spinning, while Volgnir watched her in a rapture of devotion. She reached out for him, her lover, her world, and he stepped into the circle of light and music. But Volgnir was enormous, squarish. He was not a slim prince eager to ply waltzes, even if we were inclined to play one. His folk gathered around him and they began to sway, to stomp, to circle around Margaret in a complex, deliberate side-step. They howled in harmony, their craggy faces turned up towards the moon.
After awhile, I joined them, my high little voice swooping over and under their billowing baritones.
Margaret kept dancing, in the middle of the ring of giants. Violets dropped from her hair.
The ceremony took all day. Margaret wore three dresses. The pink one, with peonies, when she came down the big white staircase of the house. She was holding a bouquet of milky blowing dandelions, and winked when she caught my eye. Volgnir stood sweating his ice-droplets in a tuxedo that we dug up out of the attic. About thirty years ago, Uncle Orrin married the brief Aunt Jo, and he was a good three hundred and fifty pounds on the day of it. After a few years of carrots and cucumbers, he was a trim one-seventy when they divorced. Aunt Jo never had much use for skinny men. Anyway, Orrin’s suit was far too small for Volgnir, who stooped under the ceiling, and tugged at the coat-sleeves, which only came down to his elbows. His blue, tattooed forearms showed bright in the parlor. He swore to honor and obey, breathless, starry-hearted.
Margaret swore to love, and that’s all.
Greta, Greta, he whispered, eyes shut in rapture, on thy breast I write my Edda, at thy feet I lay the keys of Niflheim, by thy leave alone, I live, and breathe, and die.
The second dress was brown leather and bronze studs, a shield, a spear. I dipped her braids in cold water and stood in front of the freezer with her until they hardened up pretty good. Volgnir’s sister, a Valkyrie with pale red hair, lashed their arms together with rough rope, and spoke in whatever language they all seemed to know. I caught Freya, and Hel. She touched my aunt’s face with her hoary, frosted hands and kissed Margaret on the forehead. The kiss was still there when she pulled back, faintly blue and gleaming. Each of the Hrimthursar came forward to kiss Margaret, who grew quite dizzy and breathless with each one, and her forehead shone. Together, they drank mead and ate hard, cold bread the color of ashes.
The third dress was green as summer, and though there was champagne, and more dancing, and Grandmother sitting happily in the lap of Volgnir’s uncle telling him stories of her youth in Hollywood, what I remember is Margaret, her face like a candle, drawing me out of my chair to dance with her. Her arms cold and tight against my waist, she twirled me around the grassy lawn, her smell already like snow and distant black pines. Her shoulder was hard and slippery under my hand.
It’s all right, she laughed. It doesn’t hurt. And he’s been melting for months. We’ll meet halfway. Remember what I told you.
I looked over her shoulder at one of the Hrimthursar, a young one with a great dark nose and muscles like stones. He blushed blue, looking up at me through long lashes.
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