#probabaly

I have no idea if Erling has brothers or sisters, and Alfie has a tragic backstory so the mention of loss of a child very briefly. I have done so little research it strikes me Erling’s dad’s name might not be Alfie? I’m sorry. It is now.

At school Alfie’s best subject was history. Second was languages. Even though he was good at football he wasn't the star, even of his school's team. He was very dedicated though. Watching videos over and over until the tapes wore out. Practising over and over. Disregarding the aches in his bones and the pain in his knees.

He went to church, sitting on it’s hard cold benches. His mother wrapped her headscarf tight under her chin. His fatter frowning even before the sermon had started. There was little light and the braziers were only turned on in the coldest of weather. The priest wasn’t much older than his parents but he seemed ancient. Alfie knew that football could take him far away.

He didn’t know that parenthood would be what would bring him back.

Sitting at night he would patiently trace the letters of old Norse and write down timelines that all started with Vikings and all seemed to end with world wars.

His parents would tolerate the school teach folklore only in the early years of schooling and insisted on equal time spent reading the bible.

“That child is not right.” His mother said. The wind howled and Alfie deliberately didn’t look out the window.

Erling would never stray too far away. Looking out for his father. Checking in before slinking off when Alfie tried to domesticate him.

“He is a child blessed with life by our lord.” Alfie says and they both cross themselves at the mention of the maker.

“And what have you named him?” She asks, her mouth pursed over the words.

“My son’s name is Erling.” She tried to hide her pleasure, her fathers name that she had wanted for Alfie.

She smiles then, briefly but it’s still the first sign of thawing of her disapproval.

“Well he is a strong child.” They both look at him running in the wind. Alfie can keep pants on him but Erling steadfastly refuses anything else.

“Hover to have that name that child has to be christened.” His mother says severely. “In a shirt. Quietly.”

It’s his mother that finds Erling can be bribed into nearly anything with a football.

He isn’t bothered by the snow. He touches the trees that make the makeshift square that Alfie has told him to stay in like it’s an imaginary fence. He’s not sure Erling understands yet what a fence is. And Alfie couldn’t hold him inside it if he didn’t allow it.

Erling likes hugs through. At night his mother sings lullabies. Erling enjoys them as well.

Erling sits on the chair, upright. His hands exactly in his knees, posture almost perfect, just a slight curling in at the shoulders.

“Nice to meet you. How are you?” Alfie says.

“Nicetomeetyouhowareyou?” Erling parrots back.

“Pauses son.” Alfie reminds him. “Nice, pause. To, pause. Meet, pause. You, pause.” Alfie nods and makes a go-on gesture with his hands.

“Nice. To. Meet. You.” Alfie smiles and Erling smiles back.

The elk meat on Erling’s plate is seared around the outsides and raw in the middle. Alfie only fights him to use the knife and fork for a few bites. Afterwards Erling runs his finger through the pool of elk blood and licks it up.

They watch football games, Erling’s bright eyes focused on the forward line. “You could be a defender.” Alfie reminds him. “You have the right size.” Eight years old, essentially, Erling is already over five feet tall.

“Goals.” Erling tells him. “Striker.” Alfie sleeps in the bed now, it was the couch at first, trying to keep between the door and anyone who might come looking, but the sound of Erling playing kept him up at night.

The noise of him running the little metal cars over the floorboards still keeps him up some nights, but after a while its background noise. In the morning a groove is run over the floor to the door and two cars are crumpled.

“I’ll get some more at the supermarket.” He tells Erling.

“Breakfast?” He gets back. “Pasta?”

“Can I have pasta?” Alfie prompts. Erling’s hands look bigger. “Football?” Erling says.

“I need to buy a new ball.” Alfie reminds him gently. “Shall we go for a swim instead?

Erling is like an otter in the water. Alfie rows to the centre of the fjord. Erling comes up with a pike between his teeth.

“Do you want to grill that?” Alfie asks. Erling bites the head off instead of answering, crunching loudly.

“We eat with our mouths closed.” Alfie reminds him. “Can you get one for my dinner?” Erling catches five and dumps them in the middle of the rowboat.

“Push the boat back?” Alfie suggests. That night, after frying the fish over an open fire, Erling falls asleep. Alfie leaves him there under the tree, he’s more comfortable in fresh air than in a bedroom. He would hear anyone coming from miles away anyway.

That long winter and breezy summer Alfie read through a book that had appeared on his table after Erling was, after Erling became his son. The runes revealing themselves eventually. When summer spilled to autumn the book was gone. Erling’s growth slowed to normal rates.

His talents continued to expand.

Alexander is nearly as tall as Erling. Not as strong but nearly as fast.

Erling tilts his head down the way he normally does to kiss and would have gotten Alex’s chin, if Alex didn’t laugh and slide his fingers, thin and long, across his cheeks and pull him in to kiss. Alfie spins quickly out of the room before he is seen ‘Puppy love’ he tells himself, sending Erling a text he is delayed and will be at the usual meeting place in five minutes.

Alfie walks to the corner and loiters by the park benches until the time has passed. He passes Alex on the stairs, they nod but don’t make conversation.

Alfie wasn’t sure how to even have the talk with him. Having siblings and cousins had taught him more than anything else to be more gentle off the field. Erling was kind to his stepmother. And apart from being lazy about getting dressed in the morning and a fondness for his grandmother and her singing despite her severity there was nothing to separate him from the other boys in the football academies. Perhaps a fondness for rare steak.

Erling walks home with hearts in his eyes. Raving about Alex, how he’s never felt this way before.

“You’re nineteen.” Alfie says finally. “What do you remember about being a child?”

Erling looks at his father in surprise . “I remember you. Playing football.”

“Do you remember…. Growing? Catching up to the age your brother and sister were? And then..”

Erling shakes his head. “I remember you. And Grandma.”

“Do you remember the lake?” Alfie asks.

Erling frowns on the way home. It’s late at night when the door to Alfie’s room opens.

“What haven’t you told me?” Alfie sighs, he can feel Erling’s eyes tracking him in the dark like a cat.

“This is the age when, people like you, your kind, pair up. It may not be Alex, just your hormones!” Alfie gets out in a rush.

“What do you mean, ‘people like me’?” Erling asks quietly. Alfie reaches out and Erling lets himself be held in place the same way he had as a child.

Erling has vanished in the morning. Alfie picked him up thirty miles away sitting by a lake.

“I'm not saying don’t see the boy,” Alfie says “just be careful. He’s not Norwegian. He may not understand.”

When Erling signs for Manchester he and Alex break up. Blaming distance and travel. Erling very firmly blames his father and the secrecy he make Erling promise to hold.

Alfie sits as Erling rages that Alex left because there was something he knew Erling wasn’t telling him. Even though they are together everyday the way they haven’t been since Erling was a child there is a cool distance that doesn’t quite warm between them.

Until Alex signs for Newcastle.

At first it is just to catch up with an old friend. When Erling doesn’t return until two days later glowing and in a good mood despite the bags under his eyes Alfie knows that he will simply have to adapt to a Swedish son in law.

“I’m going to tell Alex everything.” Erling says over breakfast. He’s not quite meeting Alfie’s eye, and there is a tinge of pink on his cheeks matching the pink bite mark that Alfie keeps his eyes away from peeking from under his collar.

Alfie looks at him. Older than the teenagers who usually find their partners. Erling looks very sure.

“I want you to be happy.” He says. “You know it’s different for you? You only fall in love once?”

I’’m already in love with him.” Erling says. “I won’t tell him that until he’s had time to get used to everything.”

Alfie nods and they finish breakfast in a silence that holds a lightness

They apologised, over and over. Alfie standing in the rain, the coffins lined up like nesting dolls, about to be stacked inside each other, the two littlest for show, his children lying eternally with their mother in her protective embrace.

They apologised again. Their explanations were meaningless. The teenagers, on their rampage, a yearly pilgrimage through the mountains when the trolls would find their partners. A car that wasn’t supposed to be there.

Alfie shook his head steadily and looked at the dark earth of the grave that held everything. The oldest man there, big nose slightly hidden behind his beard and moustache, his eyebrows thick and spilling over his face tangling in his lashes and finally presses a stone into his hands.

“A father should have a child, as a child should have a father. This little one’s parents didn’t escape the earthquake so many years ago.”

Alfie lets it drop on the ground and turns away once the graves are filled. It turns up the next morning in his garden, on his walk, on the floor of his children’s room.

Soon he carries it everywhere in his pocket. The stone warmed from his body heat.

He sits drinking whiskey, turning it over and over in his hands as the messages and cards stack up. Tracing the runes. The lightening bolt inscribed on it. The promise that it whispers to him.

The next time it storms he goes outside. Expecting nothing. Nothing exactly what he has held in his arms for almost a year.