The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 74

to me in my sleep? Did I believe there was any worth to what Lamba Time-Thief, my mother, had told me of Skallagrim Ice-Waster, King of the South? Did I believe Grandfather lost to me forever? I believed none of it, which I now understand is the same as believing all of it.

Abigail helped me fight off both Longfaeroe’s twists and my own dream life. She told me it was natural to reject asleep what I had not yet been able to accept awake—that I was cheated, purposeless, abandoned. She said it was simple melancholy and I should not try to explain fantasies. “I whisper to you when we sleep,” she said, smiling, “and that’s not for you to hear now, sweet Grim. What you dream is yours. Don’t be telling me it’s some brute dead a thousand years. Don’t give them to Dad. Spare your breath to cool your porridge. What of it if your mum was heartless and cold? My granny was a proper crag of feeling. My great-granny would have been human for being a witch. Your mum was a wee girl when she had you. Take her side in it. She was scared of that father of hers and made up stories to hide her fright. A king of what, she said? Black and hurt half-men? Begod, she might have tried fairy princes and slimy ogres. What is that inside you? You keep mind of what’s inside me. You’re special to me, not to any dead Viking. I have my high dreams. You have yours. Keep shut about them.”

My dreams came from the part of me that frightens me, the shape-changed berserker who cannot be vanquished, the relentless and vengeful murderer. I do not mean to suggest that I blame my paganism for my crimes, as I do not attribute what truth I have done to godliness. It was all never so clearly served up. What fed me also poisoned me. It was brewed together, the pot stirred by Lamba, Peregrine, Israel, Grandfather, and luck. Pagan luck, holy luck, who is to say and what would it matter? Grim Fiddle feasted, and was consumed. The metaphor gets it done as well as any: Spare my breath to cool my porridge indeed, Abigail, sweet Abigail.

I was lucky. It was luck that the Frazers took me into their family. Germanicus treated me like a lifelong friend, more, made me feel like his older brother, which I took as a kindness and a sadness as I watched him forget himself sometimes and call me Samson. Elephant Frazer, who assumed the governor-generalship of South Georgia in the absence of British colonialism and with the death of Luff Gaunt Senior, gave me his far-reaching protection and a job. Abigail Longfaeroe Frazer gave me everything except her secrets. The other Frazers—they were a large, marrying and breeding family of first, second, and third cousins—gave my brothers from Black Crane both help and ambition. It was luck that Lazarus, who was badly burned by the explosion of Black Crane, healed over time, was taken in by the Gaunts (Frazer inlaws), and was rewarded for his learning with a teaching post at the island’s school and eventually with the hand of one of the widowed Gaunt daughters-in-law, Violante—who gave Lazarus a daughter, Cleo, soon enough. Christmas Muir and his best mate, Martin Peggs, watched over Wild Drumrul and Otter Ransom, taught them sealing and whale-poaching, sent me shark’s teeth for my rune-carving, my hobby after my darkness lifted. Orlando the Black did the best of all of us, recovering from his wounds quickly, marrying one of the evacuated Spanish-English women from West Falkland, having three daughters in three years, being appointed an officer in the reorganized South Georgia Volunteers, being given responsibility for the small settlement on the northeast shore, Shagrock.

And it was certainly luck that in late spring of my fourth year on South Georgia (December 1999), Abigail bore me a son. There were very few hard words over this, considering that the child was a bastard and that Abigail had risked her authority on the island by refusing to marry me when everyone knew I was the father. Longfaeroe pondered what his response should be, delivered the news that since I had never been baptized, and since this child needed baptism, he would hold a joint ceremony, just after Christmas. It was the first time he got me into his church, and I realized then the deviousness of the man. Because of the possibility of scandal and scolding, he also got a full house that Sunday, everyone of any authority was present or well represented: Frazers, Gaunts, Roses, Brackenburys, even the Hospidar. Longfaeroe preached on the sins of the flesh, on the mysterious ways of the spirit, on the necessity for men to keep themselves ready for revelation and miracle. Then he baptized me Grim Fiddle, and my son Sam. Sam was also Longfaeroe’s grandson; that was not sufficient for Longfaeroe to oblige Sam with a last name. Should he have been Fiddle? Longfaeroe? Frazer? It was left undecided, Sam for Samson, and that pleased most.

I sat in the first pew with Christmas Muir and Otter Ransom, while Abigail sat on the other side with her mother-in-law and two sons by Samson. It could have been testy, became difficult only once for me, when Longfaeroe looked down at me and said, “Jehovah watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked is endless stumbling.” Abigail sat right up, called over the baby’s whimpering, “That’s more for some than him, Dad.”

Afterward, Abigail pushed through the tongue-clatterers to me and said, weepy, still puffy from giving birth, “We have this day. We have a son. They’ll not take it or him from us, ever.” Then we went arm-in-arm to the party in the adjacent parsonage, a grand affair, Frazer-style, the men in their Volunteer uniforms, the women in control. There were signs of the feuding at the time, and I