The sound of nothing

Finn’s POW

Silence. A lifetime of silence and isolation. Finn could feel the breeze on his face, he could see the leaves moving on the trees, but there was never any sound. He didn’t know what sound was. For him, the silence was normal. At the same time he knew he was not normal. Being born deaf meant being an outsider, isolated from the rest of his family and society. Finn knew he was lucky. As the second son of the family he didn’t have the burden of taking over their farm. He knew if he had been the firstborn, chances were good he had been left in the woods or a the workhouse as soon as his father knew he couldn’t hear. As the second son he could be useful. Even without his hearing, he could work. His family and everyone else thought of him as slow. No one had bothered to try to understand his attempts at communication. No one had figured out he had learned to read lips as a child and their clumsy gestures were nothing more than confusing nonsense. Finn had spent his life trying to communicate with everyone, but no one took the time to return the effort. Except his mother. She did the best she could. She tried to understand him, but didn’t have the time to spend on learning his gestures. Still, she was the one he could communicate the best with. His father mostly ignored Finn. He spent all his time with his eldest son. Finn’s brother and sister treated him like air if they didn’t need his help. When they needed something, they would seek him out and tell him to do anything they didn’t want to do. Finn didn’t mind. He was strong from all the physical labour. For that reason, no one had physically bullied him since he was a child. They may taunt him, but as long as he didn’t look at their lips, he could ignore it. He was happy to have his own little cabin on the farm. It had been used by the farm assistant back when they had one, but with Finn in the family, they didn’t need to pay an outsider. His home was filled with dried flowers and plants, odd rocks he had found and other interesting things. Finn loved the woods and the fields and the things which grew there. He spent hours walking around, gathering things he could take back home. His mother would show him how to use different plants and he learned how to recognise them.

This day was nothing different. Finn had spent it haying and raking the hay onto the drying racks. After the evening meal, he took a walk in the woods. As always, he was careful when walking. He couldn’t hear the snapping of branches or the warning sound of animals. Finn had a goal, but he wasn’t in a hurry to get there. He wanted to go swimming in the river, but he let himself wander freely on the way. When he reached the river, he looked out over it and admired its beauty. As so many times before, he looked at the water playing against the rocks and wondered what it sounded like. Finn looked for small rocks along the river’s edge. Everyone knew you needed to tie the Näck down before you stepped into the river. The Näck was a creature who lived in the river. It would drag you down to the bottom and drown you if you didn’t protect yourself. There were different ways to do it, but everyone knew the best way was to tie the Näck. You just needed a small stone and then you threw it in a high arch so it landed in the river. It needed to land without a splash. Finn was an expert at this. As a failsafe, others could always rely on calling upon the name of the Lord if the Näck grabbed them. Finn didn’t have that option. So he made sure he could throw the stones without splashing. But today he didn’t get it to work. He threw stone upon stone, and everyone splashed as they hit the water. After ten minutes, Finn was getting annoyed. Why didn’t it work? He was hot and sweaty, and he just wanted to sink into the cool water. It looked so inviting. He threw another round of stones and still no one fell into the water without a splash. Should he just return home? Finn would have given up and walked back if it wasn’t for the glittering sunlight which played in the water. If it wasn’t for the itch on his skin from the dried sweat. He made the decision he would take the chance. The Näck wouldn’t want him anyway, no one wanted Finn. Why would the Näck be any different? Finn undressed and just left his underpants on and walked out into the slow part of the river. The water felt as nice as Finn had fantasised about. He let out a long breath and started swimming. He was lost in his own pleasure when he felt a cool hand on his shoulder. Finn almost swallowed the whole river out of fright as he spun around and put his feet on the river bed. He had swum close to one of the bigger rocks in the river. Finn could swear it had been empty when he swam by. But now a man sat on it. The most beautiful man he had ever seen. His long hair was dark blue with blue and green highlights in it. His skin was pale blue, and it seemed to glitter in the sunlight. He was almost naked, but like Finn, he had something that covered his most private area. Finn noticed the man’s slender hand, the one which wasn’t outstretched towards Finn, held a fiddle. Then Finn got drawn in by the most beautiful feature of the man in front of him, his eyes. They were pale blue with green and silver speckles in them. And at the moment, they were honed on Finn. There was a question in them which Finn didn’t understand.

Sindri’s POW

Sindri watched the man on the river’s edge. He had watched him before as he had come to bathe. His tanned skin and dark hair were a contrast to Sindri’s own pale features. What fascinated Sindri was the bright and attentive look in the man’s eyes. The humans always seemed to ignore the woods, the field, the river bank and the river itself. But not this man. The brown-haired man always watched everything, taking in details. He was also irritatingly good at throwing stones, which kept Sindri from approaching him. But today, as Sindri watched, the man had failed with every stone he had thrown. The Nornors, the maidens of faith, had been kind to Sindri. As the man decided to go into the water despite his failure, Sindri smiled. Today would be the day he would talk to the man. As the man was swimming in the river, Sindri took his fiddle and sat on a rock. He played one of his favourite melodies. To be honest, it was the last one he had composed. His latest work was always his favourite. From the corner of his eye, Sindri watched the man, expecting him to turn around. But nothing happened. Nothing at all. Sindri frowned and started playing one of his older melodies. He knew this one was foolproof. He started playing and, as always, he felt the melody flow through his body as he gently swayed to it. The man kept swimming as if nothing had happened. Sindri looked at him in utter disbelief. Who was this man? As he swam close to the rock Sindri was sitting on, Sindri reached out his hand and taped the brown-haired man on the shoulder. Sindri got a little satisfaction when he saw the man splutter around, as if he was surprised by Sindri’s touch. But why was he surprised? Sindri had been playing for a while. Two golden brown eyes looked up at Sindri in wonder. Sindri inspected the human before him. He was handsome, with well-defined muscles and sharp features on his face. The golden eyes were like open books, easy to read every emotion in them.

“Who are you?” Sindri asked.

The man seemed to look at Sindri’s lips. Then the man pointed at his ears and shook his head. Was something wrong with the man’s ears? Had he got water into them? Sindri knew humans were sensitive to all sorts of things.

“You can’t hear me?” Sindri asked.

The man shook his head. This had never happened to Sindri before. In his hundreds of years, he had never encountered a human that couldn’t hear him. The human looked at him and studied Sindri like Sindri had seen him study everything. What was Sindri to do? Should he still drag the human below the surface? But he wouldn’t go voluntarily, he would struggle. Sindri needed him to go by his own free will, or the sacrifice wouldn’t count.

“Do you want to come with me?” Sindri asked the man. The man with the golden eyes shook his head and took a step back. Sindri raised his hands in a gesture of peace. He didn’t want the man to be afraid of him. Sindri didn’t want him to go. He was curious about this man who couldn’t hear sounds.

“I will not force you,” he told the man. The man looked at him like he didn’t believe him. It made Sindri smile. He was no fool. He had sense enough to be cautious, and he glanced up at the river’s edge. “You can go there if you want. I won’t stop you,” Sindri told him when he once again looked at him. Sindri had figured out the man most likely could read his lips. He attempted to speak slowly and clearly. The man hesitated, and then he took a step toward the shoreline. Sindri sat back on his rock and watched the man as he slowly moved up on the shore, never letting Sindri go with his eyes for more than a moment. When the man was safely on the shore, Sindri slipped into the water and walked towards him until the water only reached him to his ankles. The golden-eyed man looked up at him. Sindri was taller than most humans and his slender body with broad shoulders and narrow waist let him move easily in the water. The human pointed at Sindri and then at the ground next to himself. Sindri shook his head.

“No, I can’t follow you onto land,” he told him. Then he watched the human. He seemed frustrated, like he wanted to ask something, but he didn’t know how.

“Can you write?” Sindri asked, doing a fluid motion with his hand, mimicking the motion of a pen on paper. The human shook his head, and Sindri shared his frustration. He wanted to know more about this human. He wanted to know why he couldn’t hear sounds, and if there were others like him. The human shuffled around and the water which still hadn’t dried on his body glistened in the sun and caught Sindri’s attention. His eyes swept over the tanned body. It was frustrating that he could communicate with the human, but the man couldn’t communicate back. It made the conversation rather one-sided, and Sindri would never get the answers to the questions he had. The human had stopped moving and was looking at him again. He frowned and looked at Sindri. It seemed like he was trying to figure something out. He then pointed at Sindri and then moved both his hands upwards towards his shoulders with the palms facing upwards as he shrugged.

“Who am I?” Sindri asked, and pointed to himself. The human nodded. He seemed satisfied that Sindri had understood him.

“I am Sindri,” Sindri told him, and he made an effort to articulate his name. The human frowned. It was clearly not the answer he had wanted. “You want to know what I am?” Sindri asked. The human nodded again. Sindri had to think for a moment. He knew the humans had a name for him. He tried to remember what the humans of this time used. “I think you call me the Näck,” he finally answered. The golden eyes of the human grew big. He picked up a small stone, and then he pointed at the water. Sindri understood the meaning.

“Yes, I can speak to you because you didn’t bind me to the water. Please don’t throw the stone. If you do, I have to go away,” he told the man. The man studied him again. He hesitated, as if he didn’t know what to do. The young man’s eyes fell on Sindri’s waist and he excitedly pointed. Surprised, Sindri looked down and smiled.“The water lily?” he asked the human and loosened the flower he had fastened at the waist of his loincloth. He held it out to the human.The man took several steps closer, without venturing into the water, as he was fascinated by the flower. He seemed to want to reach out for it. Sindri moved his free hand to get the human’s attention.

“You can have it,” Sindri told him, and held the flower out a little more. The human looked at the flower, and then at Sindri, and then he shook his head. Sindri was confused. The man clearly wanted the flower. “Why not?” he asked. The man seemed frustrated again. Then he pointed at Sindri and then the flower. He repeated it once more. Sindri frowned. He didn’t understand what the man was trying to tell him.

“The flower and me? Is it because I picked the flower?” he asked. The man shook his head. “Because you are afraid to come closer to me?” Sindri tried. The man shook his head again, but a little more hesitant this time. Then it dawned on Sindri. “It’s because you humans think these are my flowers? You call them roses of the Näck,” he said. The human nodded. Sindri felt a rush of success as he had got it right. Then he looked at the flower in his hand. He had no connection to it other than he liked it. It grew in the ponds and tranquil lakes. The humans associated them with him as they had long stems you could get entangled in if you got close to them. The water lily could be deadly to humans for that reason.

“The flower has no powers, it has no connection to me,” Sindri told the human, and he placed it on the water and nudged it so it floated towards the human. The human man carefully walked to the edge of the water and bent over to pick it up. He looked at it and stroked the petal, he lifted it to his nose and smelled it. Sindri looked on as the man examined the flower. When he had looked at it for a long time, he bent down to put it back in the water. Sindri waved.

“Keep it. I can pick another,” Sindri told him. The man shook his head. He pointed towards the forest and shook his head again. “You can’t take it home?” Sindri asked. The man nodded and placed the flower in the water and nudged it towards Sindri. Sindri took the flower. The man pointed up to the sky and then at the woods. Sindri looked up at the sky. The sun was falling closer to the tree line.

“You need to get back home before dark?” Sindri asked. The man nodded. “Will you come back and let me talk with you?” Sindri asked. The human looked at him. He then stretched out his hand with his palm down and wiggled it from side to side. “Maybe?” The man nodded. “If you feel like talking to me and I’m not here, add three drops of your blood to the water and I will come,” Sindri told him. “It has been a pleasure talking to you, even though I don’t know your name,” he then said. The man nodded and pulled on his clothes. As he left the open area close to the river, he raised his hand to say goodbye. Sindri mirrored the movement. When the man had gone, Sindri sat down on the rock where his fiddle still lay. Sindri looked at the flower in his hand. He raised it to his nose to smell it like the human had done. Sindri then let his finger trace the petals. He felt the softness, and he was engrossed in the experience of the flower. He had never stopped and looked at it like this.