“What’s your name, girl?’ he asked.
“Garún,” she managed to get out.
“Well, Garún, you say you desire independence and I can tell you that you will not find it in there, where men eke out a living like rats and mice in one, great throng, stuck in a trap they do not understand nor perceive, but call it home nonetheless. I am, however, willing to offer you a different option than a life spent under the heels of other men and that is true freedom and true independence, as unquestionable as the sun and the sky, the mountains and the stubbornness of the Hrímlandic sheep. The best part is that you won’t have to pay a single króna for it.”
“What do you mean?’
“I own a fur farm and I need workers. It’s not big but I own it myself, absolutely free of debt. I can offer you food and a place to live, along with a salary. No vistarband, even though you are homeless and a godforsaken blendingur. Our arrangement would not be the government’s concern. You wouldn’t have to handle the beasts yourself, hateful bastards that they are, at least not while they live and bite and fight. But you’d have to clean the cages, feed them, work the skins and flay the carcasses. It would still remain primarily my responsibility, after all, I’d leave you the housework. What do you say?’
The thought of a job, of money, gave her such a quick and overwhelming sense of hope that she almost jumped into the wagon, accepting immediately. But something held her back. This wasn’t part of her plan. He’d also mentioned the vistarband, something she was only vaguely aware of. Out in the country, people had to register with the state for work at a recognised workplace. People could be bound to employers for years, indentured to them and completely dependent on being held in good standing. If the farmer was abusive, or stole from you, or something else – who would people believe? An impoverished farm labourer, new in the county? Or a land-owning farmer with a fine reputation? She didn’t know if being inside or outside the vistarband would be better for her situation. She was willing to risk being illegal in the city, less so out in the isolated countryside.
“What’s the name of your farm? And what kind of animals do you breed?’
“I breed skuggabaldur, a beast almost as unfriendly and hostile as the Hrímlandic weather, but all the more controllable as long as you keep them in their cages. The furs get more valuable as the years go by, it seems that the mesdames can’t get enough of fur coats in their bottomless wardrobes. But the farm, you would likely not have heard of it, being a runaway from Huldufjörður. It had such an ominous name, like everything else on this godforsaken island, because of some nonsense or other about ghosts or some similar inane superstition, so I renamed the farm as Ægisá and that name suits it much better than the one it had before.”
She hadn’t told him anything of being from Huldufjörður and she minded that he was right about her without asking, no matter how easy it was to figure out.
“If it’s all the same to you I’d prefer getting to Reykjavík, but I thank you for your offer.”
“So you’d rather chose fetters than freedom, no matter what I have to say. A sheep’s stubbornness is as nothing compared with a—”
“Compared with what?’ she yelled at him, accidentally losing control of herself for a moment.
She’d just about had enough of this man. Her fists were clenched. She didn’t care, she saw nothing but red. No one, let alone some hillbilly peasant, was going to stand in her way or talk down to her like that.
He stared. Tried to break her, force her to look away. She gave no quarter. He was a mountain, single-minded and unyielding, but she was the wind, a light breeze that could turn to a storm in an instant, that slowly but surely eroded everything to nothing.
“Compared to nothing, I suppose,” the farmer finally said. He considered for a while. “Very well. You’ll lie under the furs and not move a muscle. But I won’t take a króna from you for what I only do for love of my Sóla, who suffered the same cursed misfortune as you to be born deformed.”
Garún gritted her teeth in an effort to hold her tongue. She’d heard worse. She could suffer through this. This was the chance she had been waiting for. The money would be useful in Reykjavík.
A brown waxed tarp covered the wagon. Underneath were stacks of black pelts. The girl was lying in a small gap between two stacks.
“Come! You can lie down here.”
She lifted up the tarp and Garún lay down in the crevice.
“Lie down as flat as you can.” The farmer started to move heavy piles of furs over her feet. “I’ll even it out so nothing looks amiss.”
He covered her up to her chest, and she felt as if she was being buried alive. The coarse furs were filthy, and stank.
“Turn your head to the side, like that, so you can breathe. And not a single sound, or you’ll end up on the gallows. Do you hear me?’
She nodded. Then he placed a reeking pile of fur over her and everything turned black.
The wagon shook forward in the dark. All sounds were muted and distant. Garún lay there awkwardly under the weight and couldn’t move at all. Her joints ached. She felt like a corpse buried under a hill, disturbed by children playing after years and years.
The smell of the furs filled her senses, mixed with the stench of dried blood and old meat. She didn’t believe that this man could sell these wretched tatters, which were hardly better than any carcass you could find up on the heath, dead since last winter.
The
