A Hyperborean Funeral

All is cast in bittersweet light. A sun on the horizon that vivified the landscape in times unremembered shines with golden arms on a high, rocky outlook above a beach. Ice on the cliffs melts in tears of mist. Men in the last throes of illness are often brought out beneath the cliff in boats, in the belief that the rain of ice-water can make the blood pure again.1

From a small, wind-carved perch near the icy summit, the people amassed on the beach appear as insects. Beneath the ledge’s lone infant tree sits a boy not long out of infancy himself. He occasionally turns to regard the gathering, but for the most part focuses on watching the sunset.2

The memories break through, after a time. Scenes play out on the face of the sinking disk which tighten his throat until he coughs on the pain. There is no point in fighting anymore; tears blur the heavenly images of a time he wants nothing more than to return to.3

His head falls back against the growing tree trunk. The golden-lit leaves rustle a caressing song as he stares through them, into the sky. He tightly wraps his arms around his knees.4

“Håkon?”5

The boy’s eyelids open, sore and tender from nights and days of tears. A girl has come up the icy path after him. Her white-blonde hair shines in the sunset, rising and falling with the wind. Concern and cold gleam in her eyes, the color of the sea. The breeze sends ruffles through her cerulean dress. He doesn’t respond to his name.6

“Why are you up here?” her voice is light and worried. Håkon mentally curses her for finding him; he wanted to be alone.7

“I can’t watch,” he says, and offers no more.8

“But it’s your father,” she replies. “Don’t you miss him?”9

“Of course I miss him!” he yells at her, new tears choking his throat. His fists rub his eyes for the thousandth time in a matter of days. The girl had not yet lost any of her blood. He couldn’t have explained the feeling if he wanted to try.10

“Then why?”11

Håkon’s head lolls back and forth against the trunk. He is staring into the sun again, vision blurred by tears. Thinking about it was painful enough without having to give it voice.12

“They’re going to burn him up, Inga. He’ll be nothing but ash and I’ll never see him again.” He pounds the ground with one fist, and locks his fingers around the grass. Minutes pass, the tree’s rustling the only sound.13

“Håkon... if dead people don’t get burned, they get buried. You couldn’t see him anyway.”14

The boy lets his head fall into his hands. For a time he stays thus, saying nothing. Inga’s glance turns to the beach, where the insects load a motionless companion onto a tiny ship.15

A sob escapes Håkon’s hands. His frame shakes with every breath. Inga kneels down beside him, and puts a hand on his shoulder. She does not remain idle for long, however; a torch has been lit down on the beach, and men have gathered about the ship to give it the final push into the waves.16

“Håkon, look,” she pulls at his hands. He resists at first, not wanting to watch what he has dreaded all day. But it’s his last chance to see the man for whom he cries. It is now, or never again. Håkon raises his face to the sight of the open ocean.17

There floats his father’s ship, sail unfurled and without crew; only the captain is aboard for the final voyage. He lies upon a pyre behind the mast, surrounded by those things he valued in life. By the power of fire, all shall be reduced to dust and carried away to the heavens.18

But not everything he valued is on the ship.19

The captain’s son watches from the cliff above, his throat and eyes sore, his chin protruded and quivering. All these features and more – the shock of blond hair, the tall stature, the quick tongue and mind – were granted him by his father. The two were cast in the same mold.20

The torch is thrown, and Håkon finds himself unable to turn away as the pyre ignites. He has to watch. His father shed too much blood and too many tears in this world, and now he is leaving it behind.21

It does not take long before the ship is a great light upon the water, contents of the deck indiscernible in the flame. From down on the beach, a mournful horn blast fills the air as the mast snaps in half and collapses. The floating tomb will soon become one with the sea and wind, as its elements had once been aeons ago.22

Håkon’s gaze leaves the ship; his father is no longer contained to the maritime pyre. He follows the plume of smoke and ash as it drifts skyward, and finds he is again enraptured by the sun. Now, in its last moments on the horizon, it screens once more those nostalgic recollections made so unbearably painful.23

He is there in the sunset, waving forth his infant son as he takes his first upright steps. His golden face smiles within its mane of hair and beard as Håkon returns from the forest with the fruits of his first hunt. The old captain’s hand rests on the boy’s shoulder aboard the maiden voyage of the ship that has now been burnt away. Against a sunset within a sunset, he holds Håkon’s mother in his arms, the woman for whom he would have given every drop of his blood in defense, an affection matched only by the love of his son.24

The last image is of the misty morning on which Håkon last saw him, the man’s crinkle-eyed smile tugging at his heart as they embraced for what would become the final time. And too quickly, the sun slips out of view, carrying with it the body and soul of a man taken too soon from those who loved him.25

But it would be back.26

Inga, having remained silent on the cliff all this time, looks to Håkon now. She sees on him not a face of one stricken by grief, but of one heartened by a hope and love that runs gold in the blood of man. It is a raptness of one who has lived beneath skies of black, and has come to see with tortured eyes that the light will shine again one day.27

He turns to her, a new life on his tearstained features.28

“Let’s get down from here,” says he, “our mothers must be worried for us.”29

And so the wind whipped the icy landing as the two descended; the lone tree rustled its comforting melodies, though none currently were present to hear. Light pink glinted on the hanging ice, as it did on the waves below. By the time the beach was under moonlit night, there was nothing more to be spied of the ship, or the man who had ridden upon it at the very last. And yet he remained about the scene, and everywhere the sun shone its blessing on the earth. The boy who had sat upon the cliff shed tears for him no more, for each day he awoke, the old man’s crinkle-eyed smile was there, greeting him through his golden mane of hair and beard. They were features the boy found upon himself in later years, and wore with pride that he could look so much like the man in the sun whom he loved.30