Sail On, Valhallan

Travis Flatt

A small oak raft, framed with thin branches, drifts down the creek toward the pond. We watch from the dirt path, Mom and me, a newly fallen tree for our bench. Dad stands upstream. On the center of the raft, atop a bed of knit twigs, lies my betta, Erik Finn, orange and blue, like “a volcano at night,” Dad said once, stoned.

Erik died the champion of three fights but should have fought more. He would clamp his challenger by their silky, rippling fins or lock jaws to hurl them into the corner, then rush like a battering ram.

Mom said battling was cruel, so my next stay at Dad’s, I told him we were gross, like the last Roman emperors, which was dramatic and dumb.

“I fucked up, Emmy,” Dad kept saying when he called me last week. He’d come home from work at Autozone to find Erik floating upside down.

“He was two,” I said, Googling while we talked, “so, probably natural causes.” Probably.

Dad said he didn’t keep the tank clean.

He didn’t.

I need to be brave for Erik now.

Mom rubs the prickle of my shaved head—buzzed in tribute to Erik—sending a tickle-shiver down my neck that hunches my shoulders. To be honest, Mom buzzed my hair because Dad’s ex-girlfriend brought home lice from her pre-school job.

When I rub my wrist into my eyes, I remember how Dad called feeding Erik “seasoning” him, as though fish food was hot pepper flakes.

Mom squeezes my shoulders now, and says, “Sorry, Emily.”

I told Mom we were burying Erik “by the sea,” with Dogwood Pond our stand in. Thing is, Cookeville is, like, hundreds of miles from the Atlantic. She tried not to laugh. That’s Mom, who, even for my fish funeral, dressed up to brave mud, mosquitoes, and poison ivy. And an hour with Dad.

“Hail Erik Finn,” I say, “best of his name. Sail on, Valhallan.”

Dad waits with his hickory ren faire bow, engraved with letters from the elvish D&D language, Espruar. It reads: “Fly fast, fly free.”

He nods. I break from Mom to run, take his lighter, and set flame to the cloth-wrapped arrow.

Right before the divorce, two years ago, my sixth-grade summer, Dad won Erik at the carnival, shooting targets with suction cup arrows.

Just after the divorce, Dad and I watched a Netflix documentary about Vikings, nestled on the couch, eating popcorn mixed with crunched up Oreos. That’s when Mr. Blue Fins became Erik Finn. That’s when I told Dad I’m a Valkyrie and fell asleep listening to long boats and bloodrage, magic trees and dragons.

The arrow flame is invisible in the afternoon, just a haze rimmed with orange.

The raft reaches the point where the stream empties into the pond, so Dad releases. The arrow arcs, landing directly on the mark. The raft explodes. No glorious, hallowed pyre, but a toy raft dashed to pieces, flinging shattered hunks of flaming wood outward as if struck by a meteor.

Mom, who had stood in respect, nearly trips backward over the fallen tree, covers her face and shouts, “Jesus, Mike.”

Dad stands with the bow poised in his hands, but he stares at Mom, not the scattered raft-shrapnel littering the scummy water and pebbly bank, some pieces still smoldering.

Erik Finn floats useless and dead on the pond surface, drifting like a plastic six-pack ring.

“No,” I say, rushing out shin-deep, waist-deep, into the muddy pond. I try to combine chunks of smoking wood into a pile with Erik Finn on top, forming a pyre between my hands.

“Honey, stop,” Mom’s saying. Dad’s saying, “Wait. Wait. Wait.”

It’s no good; the wood stings my fingers too badly. Erik squirts away. I accidentally send him outward toward the pond’s center.

“Get out of there, Emily,” Mom says, and I’m crying. Dad says, “Don’t yell at her; she didn’t do anything; don’t yell at her.”

Mom squishes her good shoes into the water. “Come on now, it’s dirty. You can’t fix it.”

Dad kicks dirt over smoking pieces of raft spread around the bank. “Shut up, Robyn. It’s fine. It’s my fault.”

Mom tugs my arm as the water rises around her expensive black dress, one she put on after she realized she hurt my feelings by almost laughing; I told her she didn’t need it. The hem puffs up in the water, rippling like a silky fin.

“Let’s go, Emily. Let’s go home. We’ll buy you another fish.”

“It’s nobody’s fault,” says Dad, still kicking around on the bank. He’s always talking about faults.

I stand in the water, not crying, just watching Erik Finn, who will stay to rot in bullshit Cookeville, Tennessee, never battle in Valhalla, flown away on the eagle wings of the Valkyries. I don’t know whose fault that is.

© Variant Literature Inc 2023