The Fountain of Youth

Chapter 10

Sam woke up feeling like a cadaver, post-autopsy. His blurry vision gradually became clearer only to reveal that the walls and ceiling around him were not that of his lodge. In fact, he’d only just realized that he hadn’t checked into any lodges when he heard the distant gibber-jabber of the Joensens, the hosts of the party the night before. They were in the kitchen, engaged in loud conversation.

“Oh yah,” he groaned softly as he tried to sit up from the couch he was lying on. The windows were wide open, curtains flanking the frame. The sharp cloudy daylight stung his eyes. “For fuck’s sake,” he whispered, surveying the room through slit lids. Sam’s head was pounding, but he got up as quickly as he could. Like a strike of a match the blond woman from the night before appeared in his recollection and Sam remembered what he’d stayed a bit longer for. He had to find out more about her.

“He’s up!” Heri shouted to the other men still there. From what Sam had gathered, they’d all just keeled over one by one the night before, just as he had. “How did you sleep, pal? My mother threw a blanket over you, otherwise you would have frozen to death.”

“Tell her thanks,” Sam grunted, petting his brow with a flattened palm to give it some heat for the pulsing hell in his skull.

“Tell her yourself. Mom, this is Sam Cleave, a journalist from Scotland here…” Heri did not want to open the Grind can again, “…on vacation.”

Sam gave him a thankful nod as he put out his hand to the small lady behind Heri. But when she stepped in front of her son, Sam was visibly taken aback by her unnaturally youthful appearance.

“Hello Sam,” she smiled in a heavy accent. “My English is not as good as my son’s, but welcome to the Faroes and to my home. Please excuse my sons and their friends when they get too crazy. It is a herid…herita…they get it from their forefathers.”

“Hereditary, Mama,” her son grinned and hugged her. “And Scots are as bad as we are. Most of the northern parts of Sam’s country are infested with people who come from the same roots as us anyway.”

The approving roar from the other men sounded again. Sam had to laugh. It was as if they roared happily whenever something cool was said about them, even if they should happen to be on the other side of the archipelago, it seemed.

“Nevertheless, behave in front of guests, alright?” she reminded her son. “I am just going to take this basket to Hilde at the shop. Behave!”

With her last command she winked at Sam and exited the room.

“Women,” Heri said, just as he always did when he felt awkward at their reprimands or outbursts.

“Aye,” Sam smiled, although he was positively itching to ask Heri why they all looked half their ages. Granted, most of the men he’d met looked relatively normal for their age, but a lot of the others just defied the science of aging.

“Heri, you know that journalists are naturally curious about all kinds of things, right?” he eased into the subject.

“Yes, nobody knows that better than us here on the islands. Why?” Heri answered.

“I’m curious…” Sam winced at the looming conversational embarrassment.

“You’re wondering why my mother looks like she could have been a child bride?” the local laughed.

Jesus! Dead-on! Sam thought, and then replied with, “Not a child bride, necessarily…why, do you people do that here?”

Everyone in the kitchen bellowed with laughter, but they refrained from either confirming or denying the question. All they did was stuff a plate of rye bread and omelet in Sam’s hands, telling him to sit down and relax.

“Seriously though,” Sam said slowly, checking the reaction of his host and his friends to keep tabs on just how inappropriate his prying was. “It’s uncanny how young some people here look for their age. Man, just tell me, because if you have a pool around here that keeps you all young I would love to have a dip!”

Heri’s friends and brothers just chuckled and spoke in their native tongue, ignoring the honest curiosity of the tourist; everyone, except Heri. He gave Sam a long look of consideration while Sam could see that his wheels were turning.

Aye, you want me to know. You want to tell me. So come on, m’boy, tell Uncle Sam what makes you all look so young. Come on! Sam was thinking as he ate, watching the smart man work his brain to accommodate the curiosity of the foreigner.

Luckily for Sam, the other fishermen exited the back door of the house and stepped into the sharp, white light that had been knackering Sam’s senses, exacerbating his hangover. Now that he was alone with his new friend he hoped to find out more about the interesting back stories he had heard about regarding the lost Allied gun pits and radio contact stations.

“Why do you think youth is better, Sam?” Heri asked him. It was a question Sam hadn’t been expecting, and certainly not one he had an answer for.

“I didn’t say I did. I just thought it wouldn’t hurt getting some reversal if I could, you know?” Sam replied, hoping that his loose answer would cover more ground.

“Imagine if people didn’t grow old at the rate they were supposed to,” Heri said. “Just forget about the perks of an extended life force for a second, and imagine what would happen if we had to find a Fountain of Youth.”

Sam nodded as he ate, but when he looked up and met Heri’s eyes, he realized the man expected an actual answer. Now he was forced to confront a usually rhetorical question.

It’s too fucking early for anything this deep, Sam thought, still working on countering the alcoholic influence on his thoughts. Yet his host expected an answer. “We’d all be as good looking as you and your mum? We’d get laid a whole lot more for a whole lot longer?”

Heri lifted his hand and sank his shaking head. “Sam, I’m serious. Think about it. If nobody died, or if people lived longer at the current rate of procreation, it would take us less than half a century to be out of food, water, and space. I mean, God, the state of the world right now is catastrophic because there are simply too many humans on this planet for the environment to sustain us all.”

“I understand exactly what you’re saying,” Sam agreed, finally sincere. “But perhaps if science could hone the regenerative factors of youth, don’t you think it could aid in the cures of age-specific diseases like Alzheimer’s or the likelihood of strokes? Osteoporosis? Arthritic inflammation and stiff joints? Look, I’m not saying that there should be an elixir for staying pretty, Heri. The thought of such a possibility just speaks to the scientific edge in me.”

Heri peered at Sam and cleared his throat. “Something you don’t know about me, is that I’m a textbook scientist too, Sam. And I have a great affinity for physics. But believe me when I assure you this: such a discovery would rapidly evolve into a greed-driven pursuit for beauty, abused for vanity instead of scientific progress or medical solutions. You know this! I know you do. You’ve seen how the whaling here got out of hand when ill-researched speculation fueled the self-righteous to attack what they could not explain, or control!”

“Yes, I know,” Sam replied as he finished his omelet. “I saw that and I, more than anyone, know that the media is the brain of the ignorant. Lazy minds eat up information presented by the media without ever questioning the parts they omit, the parts that can drastically throw a three-sixty on the truth.”

“Exactly. If such a thing existed, why would we ever tell you?” Johild snapped at Sam, jolting his heart to jump at her voice.

The Bitch is back, Sam heard his inner bastard announce, but he did not show it. Much as she was abrasive and unpleasant, Sam couldn’t deny her beauty and the fact that he enjoyed looking at her. Heri sighed at her mean opening line, but Sam remained docile. “Good morning.”

“Are you still fishing for a story?” she asked sarcastically as she emptied the bag she had with her, unpacking some vegetables and ræstkjøt, dried and cured meat Sam would soon become quite addicted to.

“I’m just on vacation, lassie,” he elected to rear his head a bit. “The only reason I have my Nifty 50 with me is for hot Scandinavian women and stunning landscapes.”

“Which hot women?” she asked while Heri held his tongue to relish the tragic sexual tension between his cousin and the tourist.

“That selkie on Mikladalur has had all my lens time so far,” Sam joked harshly.

“A statue,” Johild scoffed. “Cold, lifeless women. Is that what appeals to you, Sam Cleave?”

“Aye,” he cheered, “and they’re still warmer than you are.”

Heri choked on his tea, making sure his cousin did not see him shaking with laughter.

“And at least the landscapes here have curves a man’s eye can follow for hours,” he continued for good measure. He had had it with the pretty woman’s rude approach to him for absolutely no reason. “So don’t flatter yourself that I’m here to report on the bloody beaches or entertain the assumptions of women who don’t know me.”

Johild was speechless, which was probably a good thing. Had she uttered what she was thinking, her father would probably have been disappointed. She dropped the rest of the food on the cupboard top and walked into the house.

“You just made an enemy for life there, pal,” Heri remarked indifferently, adding hot water to his cup.

“Hope she’s patient. There’s a bit of a queue,” Sam shrugged. “Doing what I do, you learn to burn bridges without much sense of loss. It’s a pity, but that’s the way it is.”

Heri smiled. “You know, Sam, I believe I know now why I relate to you so easily. You’re one of very few foreigners I don’t think of as an idiotic rambler coming to spew judgment at us. You understand the misunderstood, my friend.”

Sam gave it some thought and found that the local’s point of view made a lot of sense. “I believe I do, aye.”

“You understand the misunderstood, because I suppose we have to admit that you are as misunderstood as we are. Most people think of journalists as vultures of ill fortune, or as attention whores who feed on tragedy,” Heri explained. “But you, specifically, are not like that. When people hear that I come from the Faroe Islands they immediately hate me for killing innocent whales in bloody victory and drunken evil…but none of that is remotely correct. When people hear you are a journalist, they instantly brand you as a dirty carrier of twisted media bullshit out to make us look bad. In essence, you and I, we’re one and the same in such issues.”

“Maybe there’s no fountain of youth here to keep you good looking, my friend,” Sam chuckled, “but there must be a mead horn of wisdom around here.”

“Now you’re talking,” Heri laughed. “But I’ll not dismiss the lame references to my looks coming from you. I’ll take those compliments too, thank you very much!”