“Takk,” he whispers to the empty house, the freshly filled grave and the silence. Leifr is nothing but chapped papery skin over heavy viking bones, but he leans into the oars with all that’s left of him.

After Fenrir swallowed the sun last year, summer never came. Now he carries a saint’s bone to shield against evil and wraps himself in sheepskins to fend off the cold of the forlorn sea. His heart is as restless in his chest as an eel in a barrel.

“Ragnarök is so much quieter than I thought it would be,” he says aloud to the fishes.

Rowing east with a few caged birds, he recites again and again the seer’s words:

“In the infancy of the first green leaf, let the sparrow perch in the morning sun.”

This entry is part of my journal, published January 3, 2014, in New York.