The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [168]
“Now tell me your story,” she said. “Where you come from, why you are here.”
She gazed at me steadily while I told her how the deaths of first my parents and then my uncle had severed me from the Icelandic side of my family. “I’m going to university in the autumn,” I said. “I wanted to find out if I have any relatives—grandparents, perhaps an aunt or uncle.”
“Did you know that Scotland is part of our sagas?” said Hallie. “Earl Thorfinn was greedy and ugly and ruled the Orkneys from a place called Birsay. Some say he was Shakespeare’s Macbeth.”
“Birsay?” I recalled the red sandstone ruins on the edge of the village.
Hallie nodded; her pendant flashed. “Yes, the gods were on his side for a while. How many days do you have to find these people?”
“A week. I’m worried it’s not long enough to search an entire country.”
“If there is any place this is possible,” Hallie said, tapping the table, “it is here. We are a not large island with a not large population. People know each other and know each other’s families. In one way or another many people here are related.”
“In Scotland,” I said, “we have a registry of births, marriages, and deaths.”
“We have the same. Tomorrow morning I will take you and translate. What became of your parents’ house?”
“My aunt said no one answered my uncle’s letters about it.”
“If the house belonged to your father,” said Hallie meditatively, “then it should belong to you.”
“But it’s all so long ago. Sixteen years. Someone else must be living there now.”
“Still, you are a daughter of Iceland. Tell me your father’s name.”
I fetched my notebook. Like her niece, Hallie said the name aloud: Einar Arinbjornsson. By the end of the week, I thought, I would be able to say it. “What about your name?” she said. “Did you always have a Scottish name?”
“No. But I’m not sure how to say my own name either.” I turned the page and showed her.
“Fjola Einarsdottir,” she said. “It is a good name. Fjola is a flower—white or purple—called a violet. And Einar—your father’s name—means ‘he who fights alone, a great warrior.’ So your name has a soft part and a hard part.”
“Fjola Einarsdottir,” I repeated.
“I wonder why you were not called Violet in Scotland,” said Hallie. “It is a name for girls, isn’t it?”
“Yes, for flowers and girls. I don’t know why. My uncle chose my name, and I never thought to ask.”
“You can be Fjola here,” said Hallie. She stood up from the table and announced that she was going for an evening stroll. “We will start to spread the word,” she said. “I have neighbours who like to talk. Could you clean the plates? The door is open. Go for a walk if you like, or go to bed. We have breakfast at eight.”
The sun was still high, and after I had washed the dishes and put them away as best I could, I went for a walk. In the nearby streets many of the houses, like Hallie’s, were made of corrugated iron and had roofs of different colours; some were whitewashed or harled. Beyond the rooftops I saw the jagged mountains, and between the houses, from two different directions, I glimpsed the sea. Reykjavik, Hallie had told me, meant “smoky bay.” While the houses looked different the trees were familiar—rowans, birches, firs—and so were the flowers—lupins, snapdragons, roses, daisies, marigolds, and pansies. As I walked, I recounted the momentous events of the last forty-eight hours. I had broken things off with Archie, who had saved my life; I had stolen from the MacGillvarys, who had been nothing but kind to me; I had ruined my friendship with Hannah and Pauline. How could I tell them that their beloved brother had refused to kiss me? Perhaps, I thought, his preferences followed Hannah’s but he didn’t know it yet. Or perhaps he was like Miss Seftain and didn’t care about anyone in that way. And now I had flown to Iceland and was walking down a street in Reykjavik, the