“But on the other hand, she’s never let it take over her life. She even made a living on it. That’s something, isn’t it?”
It was something. It was an unusual choice of career, but less so in Iceland, where a significant portion of the population identified at least a passing superstition regarding fairies, elves, and other magical creatures. Sigrid’s assistant had researched survey data on the subject. Sigrid herself appeared in the research. She had done numerous interviews on the subject and had been profiled by the travel channels. For a time she even had her own video feed, with enough subscribers to warrant extra security on her account. They still sent in money and gifts. It was thanks to them that she could have an assistant.
“I think maybe she started out cynically,” Erika said. “She raised me alone, you know. So she was doing what she had to do to get by. But I think later on that must have changed, and she started believing what people told her.”
“People?” Did Sigrid’s daughter mean all people? Everywhere? Or just a certain subset of them?
“Her followers. They were so passionate. Some of them really did need her. Or they needed someone. Their parents kicked them out, or they lost their jobs, or they lost children, or . . .” Sigrid’s daughter trailed off. She took a moment, sipped her lukewarm coffee, winced, and cleared her throat. Then she regarded the assistant with a more direct gaze. Her hands rested so completely flat on the table that she must have been pressing them down. “I spent a lot of time sharing my mother,” she said, in a voice that suggested a great deal of practice saying these words. “I spent so much time sharing her that I learned to give her less of a role in my life. My mother is not my best friend. She is not my faithful confidante. For her, those things are jobs to be paid for. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“And that is why I am paying for you.”
“When would you like me to start?”
And that was that. Sigrid’s daughter signed the End User License Agreement, and some waivers, and the shop transferred his deed to her name. Later that day, Erika would bring Sigrid over for coffee and cake, and they would be introduced. The assistant helped her set the table. He wiped the rim of the bowl holding the special potato salad that Sigrid’s sister used to make, years ago. (Potatoes, pickles, mayonnaise, sour cream, mustard, salt, and pepper. He was told to remember this. It was the one thing Sigrid would reliably eat.) Finally, when everything was right, he took a seat at the table and waited. Sigrid’s bus deposited her at the front door right on time.
“Don’t trust her,” Sigrid’s daughter said, suddenly, in the same tone of voice she might have used to remind herself that she had left the stove on. “That’s my one rule. Never trust her.”
*
Aside from major sabbaths and other holidays, each day unfolded in much the same way:
05:00: Boot; retrieve updates and install
05:05: Change clothes
05:10: Tidy house
05:40: Prepare breakfast
06:00: Wait
07:00: Wake Sigrid
07:30: Retrieve Sigrid from meditation
08:00: Bathe Sigrid
08:30: Feed Sigrid
09:15: Convince Sigrid to eat a few more bites, clear up breakfast dishes
09:40: Read Sigrid her messages, answer messages
11:00: Open parcels, sort parcels, send messages of thanks; if no parcels, help organize ritual tools
12:00: Lunch
13:00: Put Sigrid down for her nap to prevent sundowning; prepare dinner ahead of time and set aside
13:45: Wake Sigrid
14:00: Wake Sigrid again
14:20: Prepare for walk outdoors
15:00: Visit community center for games and tea
16:45: Walk home
17:00: Contact Sigrid’s daughter; listen for inconsistencies in conversation
17:30: Ritual work
19:00: Dinner
19:40: Music
20:40: Put Sigrid to bed
21:00: Wait
22:00: Put Sigrid to bed again
22:40: Wait
23:30: Put Sigrid to bed for the final time
24:00: Defragment
There were minor leaks and tears in the routine, of course. Sometimes the young volunteers at the community center wanted to know what sex their children would be, and Sigrid would ask them to stand up and turn around. Her left hand, which she called the receiving hand, would drift to their lumbar regions and lay flat there, fingers splayed, like a safecracker sensing the delicate shift of tumblers and pins. “A boy,” she would say, or “a girl.” Then the list of things those carrying the fetus must not do, like staring into the northern lights, or eating the eggs of a ptarmigan.
Occasionally there were more frantic pings: followers who were about to hurt themselves and needed an interface with local police forces in their area, or followers rendered irate by the fact that they could no longer visit and pay homage in person.
At the new moon, full moon, and sabbaths, Sigrid recorded video messages to share with her followers. They were not the rituals she had once led online, but simple meditations and wisdom relevant to the time of year. Since she had devoted herself completely to the gods and hidden folk in her latter years, she had ceased public ritual work and focused solely on private worship. Some followers said the quality of the videos had changed, now that she could speak to a humanoid. Others treated her usage of a mechanical assistant as a betrayal; for these she prominently displayed the black tourmalines at the corners of her cottage, and the shungite stones in all her water glasses.
“I need to protect myself from your electromagnetic frequencies,” Sigrid told him, after he came home with her. “Anything that interferes with my personal vibrations will disrupt the waves of intention I send into the ethers.”
She glared at him and dropped another polished black stone into the pitcher of water that belonged to the refrigerator. The refrigerator bonged softly to get it back; the sticker on the pitcher and the sticker in the fridge chittered at each other in a language that only the assistant could hear.
“There are spirits all around us, you know,” she said. “And the elves, outside. They’ll smell it, your presence. They’ll smell it on me.”
“What is the smell like?” the assistant asked. “I myself have no sense of smell, only an air filter calibrated to detect toxins.”
Sigrid made a sign in the air that was either a banishing stave or an obscene gesture. Either way, the assistant let her leave the room until she asked him, rather sheepishly, to open a jar of loose dragon’s-blood resin.