Banija – 0 (0)
Græntfjall – 0 (0)
B. Ernestisson; Gunnþórsson, T. Ernestisson, Vilbjörnsson; Marvinsdóttir(59’ Sofussdóttir
), Grímólfursson, Arvidsson, Spiderlair; Finnvarðsdóttir
(45+1’)
Græntfjall – 0 (0)
B. Ernestisson; Markusson, T. Ernestisson(64’), Grímólfursson, Urbansson, Spiderlair; Finnvarðsdóttir
Nephara – 1 (1)
Carrick(41’)
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
But enough about the last time Græntfjall scored a goal in international football.
Græntfjall lay in a state of chaos. It had been months since the soldiers, ordered to fire on protestors, had thrown down their rifles and crossed to join the workers and students, the elderly and the young, the conservatives and the socialists, the Catholics and the Neopagans. In every town square, statues of Marx and Lennon and the Great Chairman and the First Secretary had been toppled, decapitated, smashed with hammers, hurled into bays, melted for scrap. The Præsidium had fled, never to return. A contingent led by a daring young officer named Úlfur Sigþórsson had led a raid from the Hofvinger Exclave. Only the personal intercession of the great playwright, Zóphonías Juliusson, had stopped a massacre as the Party Archives were looted and the books thrown open on secret informers and undercover agents, on neighbor betraying neighbor. Yet after the months of mayhem, the country was no closer to forming a government or repelling the last of the hardliners holding down the capital. Advocates of inviting Þorberg and Júlíana to return from their exile sent missives to Quebec City, arriving at a plush mansion in the 2nd Arondissement.
Those letters arrived at a household in just as much a state of chaos. Servants skittered down corridors, laden with travelling gear, stuffing heavy winter coats into suitcases, dusting off regimental uniforms and exchanging murmurs about adding to the waistline. Out of earshot of Þorberg, of course, who bristled at any mention of his latterday corpulence. The immense man, not tall but near as wide across, head surmounted by a head that resembled nothing less than a highly polished egg (the blonde locks flowing from beneath a jauntily cocked helmet owed their lustre to a wig, a note generally left out of subsequent Græntfjaller history books) was barking orders at the officers surrounding the dinner table, over which a map of the Græntfjaller Alps had been laid. Radio operators called out to each other as little blue and green shapes representing forces were moved across positions towards a threatening red lump. Every few moments, a great wail rent the air, momentarily chilling even the hardened soldiers and military strategists, though Þorberg alone seemed impervious.
Kassanda wasn’t quite tall enough to see the table, and had been told off more than once anyway for playing with the soldiers. “They are not toys!” Þorberg would snap at her, though privately his aides considered the table little more than a toy, diverting his attention while actual matters of strategy were run through those whose military experience hadn’t been entirely forged in the recollection of centuries-old family tales of chivalry. All the same, the girl stayed close to the table’s edge, watching everything with sharp, bright eyes that more than one of those assembled considered eerily acute for a child of her age. Except Þorberg, who didn’t even noticed as he moved a tank battalion into position, and fumed as he was told that that might be a “sub optimal positioning” (the sub in question being the lake said tank battalion would sink into if it took his proposed route). A quick-thinking adjutant swept Kassandra out of the way just in time to avoid her father’s 300+ pound bulk barrelling down and squashing her.
“Why don’t you go upstairs and see if your little sister is here?” suggested the adjutant.
Another of Júlíana’s screams sounded. She was a strong woman, and had already borne Kassandra – but child birth in a mansion bed, far from the comforts of hospitals and epidurals, was still child birth. Kassandra shook her head.
“I don’t want a thithter.” She took after her father, the adjutant realized. “I want a puppy.”
“Maybe your parents will get you a puppy if you’re a good girl!”
Kassandra kicked the adjutant in the groin.
“Ow! You have no idea how painful that is!” he gasped as he crumpled to the floor, and then glanced up to see three extremely sour female officers frowning down at him. Another scream. “Point taken,” he whispered feebly.
The Rose Apartments in Gunzlach were as far from the mansion as was possible. The other side of the world, and not a spacious, luxurious mansion, but a dilapidated set of poorly maintained hovels stacked atop another and reaching into the smog-clouded sky. There was no heating: ever since the gas workers had stopped being paid they had, not unreasonably, downed tools. Every time the woman opened her mouth to scream, a great plume of steam gusted about her. It was like a dragon giving birth. On a thin, stained mattress, the woman – a girl, really, tiny except for the distended stomach – screwed shut her eyes and rode out another wave of pain. Her scream easily pierced the thin, practically crumbling walls of the apartment. Dr. Úlfhéðinsson’s face was dripping with sweat; Júní Hildarsdóttir brought forward another bowl of steaming water.
“OK dear, save up your energy, and then we’re going to try again. One big push. Can you do that for me, child?” panted Dr. Úlfhéðinsson, a neurologist who hadn’t attended a birth since his own daughter’s, some 25 years past. Júní was an eager assistant, but totally untrained medically: she worked at the factory. Or did, when the factory was open, which it hadn’t been in three weeks.
“Please, you have to save him. Promise me,” panted the young woman weakly.
Dr. Úlfhéðinsson shook his head. This should be happening in a hospital. But with uncollected refuse piled man-high in the streets, and banks of uncleared snow filling the gaps between the rat-infested trash mountains, no ambulance could make it out here. Last week he’d held his neighbor’s hand as the man died of a heart attack that the hospital not five minutes away as the crow flies should have been able to treat. “You’ll be fine, dear,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “His shoulder is stuck. He’s a big one, isn’t he? Júní, I’m going to need you to help me provide traction, OK?”
“I don’t have a tractor,” sobbed Júní.
Dr. Úlfhéðinsson pinched his nose and tried again. “I need you to get down here…”
“Woah.” Júní had got down there, and very suddenly come to the firm realization she did not want to have children herself.
“It’s OK, it’s all perfectly natural.”
The trembling girl perfectly naturally screamed. Seeking to comfort her, Dr. Úlfhéðinsson tried to remember her name. “Now now, ah… Ms Stígsdóttir…”
“Þórhalla,” the girl croaked weakly. “My name is Þórhalla.”
“OK, Þórhalla. On the count of three, I want you to push… does the little one have a name?” he asked, trying to comfort the distressed girl, who was twisting her undernourished body into knots on the mattress.
The girl shook her head.
“The father…”
The girl shook her head again. Eighty years of communism had failed to break that most stubborn of Græntfjaller traditions, patronymic naming, but where there was no father, babies would sometimes take either their grandfather’s surname, or, a matronymic name. So this would be…
“Baby Þórhallursson it is. Júní, be ready with the towel. And listen to me, whatever happens, do not drop him…!”
