by Margi Preus
I wouldn’t have the patience for that. I’m as twitchy inside as this man is on the outside. I know I shouldn’t long to go, but I do. I am useless here. Never any good when there’s life and death on the line, I can’t save this man. I couldn’t save Snowflake’s newborn kid. I didn’t help Mama, either, did I, when she was suffering? When she sent me for help all those years ago?
“Go down the path,” she’d said, “through the pasture, keep straight on it, over the little bridge, stay on the path through the forest, and …” She waved her hand for me to go. But I hadn’t wanted to go, had I?
“Astri,” Greta says, “you could go get help, and I could stay with Svaalberd.”
“No!” I cry. “I’m not leaving you here alone with this madman!”
“Should I go for help, then?” she asks.
“No! You are too little to go off on your own like that.”
“Then we’ll wait until someone comes.”
So we wait.
But no one comes.
Svaalberd’s eyes still follow me, and I don’t know whether to look or whether not to, for when I do, I see something I don’t want to know. His eyes betray that he is not a goat, not a troll, nor devil, demon, or spirit. He is just a man, and he is suffering.
I shift my gaze to his shirt, to the drop of wax that’s dried there on the front. It’s a trivial thing compared with the other dirt and stains around it, but it’s that drop of tallow that draws my eye and won’t let go.
In the story of the bear-prince and the girl, the enchantment could be broken only when the tallow was washed out of the prince’s shirt. Only then could the spell be broken.
If I could scrub that spot away, could we turn back time? Could we go back and back and back to when the shirt was clean, before the tallow dripped on it, before I rose from the bed that night on my foolish errand, before we walked through the deepening snow to get to his farm, before he came to get me, before Papa left, oh! before Mama died? Could we go all the way back, and everything could be different? Maybe Mama would not have had to die and then Papa would not have gone away and then Greta and I would not be sitting here watching the life seep out of this man.
It may be that I haven’t liked him much, but that doesn’t mean I want him to die!
But there’s nothing I can do.
Only there is, isn’t there? Perhaps you have been wondering when I will remember that there is a book of cures, remedies, and charms right in that sack.
I open it and take out the book.
“What’s that?” Greta asks, reaching toward it.
“Don’t touch it!” I cry, snatching it away. “This is a book of prodigious power.”
“Pro-jid-juss?”
“It means a terrible much. With this book, little sister, you can conjure up and put down the devil and get him to do just what you command. These pages teach how to put out fire without water, find buried treasure, cure diseases, remove warts, turn back the attacks of snakes and dogs, and banish all kinds of pain.”
“You can do all that?” Greta says.
“Well, you have to know how to read writing,” I admit. “That might cause us a bit of trouble.”
After a few moments Greta asks, “Aren’t you going to open it?”
I nod, but hesitate. I’m thinking of things I’ve heard said: that those who possess the Black Book can go mad. Some have even done away with themselves. It’s said that it can be dangerous even just to listen to the words from this book. And I’m fairly certain the parson would not approve.
But I only want to use it for good! Is it all right to use a bad thing for a good cause? I want to do what’s right. But how can I, when I am faced with only impossible choices?
As I struggle with this, Svaalberd tries to rise but is seized by such a spasm that he nearly folds himself in two—his head flung back and his legs behind him, as if head and feet will touch behind his back. There’s the crunching sound of bones breaking, a snap like the whole trunk of a tree cracking apart. He gasps, the air seems to catch in his throat, and then he’s still.
Greta and I cling to each other, trembling. Finally she says, “I think he’s dead.”
“Ja.” I breathe in the word.
We stand like that for a moment, and then Greta says, “Now we must have a funeral.”
“Funeral!”
“We can’t carry him to a church, so we’ll have to do it ourselves,” says Greta. “Here.”
“It’s going to be pretty hard to bury him,” I point out.
“We shall just have to cover him with moss,” Greta says. And so we do. We pull up a nice thick blanket of moss, soft from the rain, and spread it over his body.
Then Greta takes some dirt in her tiny hand. “Almighty, everlasting God,” she prays, “teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom. Amen.” She tosses the dirt on the mossy grave. “Out of the dust art thou taken,” she says. More dirt. “Unto dust shalt thou return.” And a little more. “Out of the dust shalt thou rise again.”
“That is pretty good, little sister,” I say. “You could grow up to be a parson and wear a black cassock and a white ruff around your neck.”
“That can’t happen,” she says, “because women can’t be pastors.”
“In America they can,” I tell her. That’s likely not true, but they say that women are treated with more respect in America, so who knows?
“Now it’s your turn to say some scriptures,” Greta says.
I recite the only scripture that comes to mind. “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a goatman to enter the kingdom of heaven. So, old Svaalberd, I’m not sure you’re going to make it. Amen.”
“Now the sermon,” Greta says.
“You give the sermon,” I suggest. “You know all the words, and in the right order, too.”
“You should give the sermon because you knew him.”
“I don’t think I really knew him,” I admit. “How much do we really know each other, when it comes down to it? He told me once about the huldrefolk, and about how we live side by side with them, and sometimes I wonder if maybe we’re all huldre somehow, hidden from each other in ways we can only guess at. I know Svaalberd was a mean old man, but what made him thus? Did he have that hump as a youngster? That would make for a hard life, wouldn’t it?”
“This is a very strange sermon,” Greta says.
“Yes, I suppose it is,” I agree. “But I’ve been thinking that although I didn’t know Mr. Svaalberd, not really, nor did he know me, the strands of our lives are braided together somehow.” I pause, and in that moment I see that so is all of life, braided together—this talkative brook speaks my thoughts; the thrush trills out the song of my heart. Were I to stand still long enough, roots would grow from the soles of my feet into the earth.
It makes me dizzy to consider it, but I feel suddenly how all things are woven together, all things seen and unseen, all things alive now and that once were, for generations back and generations to come, woven of a kind of golden thread that links me to Greta and both of us to this man, to everyone and everything forever right now, this moment, world without end, amen. Which is how I finish the sermon: “World without end, amen.”
A Feast
nce we’ve tied the gunnysack to the saddle and settled ourselves on Dapple, we set off in a westerly direction.
After a while it begins to rain in earnest. Soon we are soaked to the bone and shivering. Steam rises off Dapple’s flanks, and I can feel Greta’s little bones clattering against me as she clings to my waist.
“There is something about a funeral that always makes a person hungry,” I say, as we ride into a village.
Greta cranes her neck to look at the shops and fine houses passing by. “I don’t remember riding through a village before,” she says. “Shouldn’t we be going back for Spinning Girl?”
“Wouldn’t you like to get out of the rain and have something to eat before we ride all that way?” I sugge
st. “I’ve always wanted to eat in an inn, haven’t you?”
“An inn?” Greta asks.
“It’s a place where they serve whatever you ask for on a plate with a spoon and all,” I explain. “You have only to give them a few coins in exchange. And if I’m not mistaken, this is an inn right here.”
Dapple seems relieved to be led into a stable behind the building. When he’s settled, Greta and I go inside the inn, where we sit down at a table laid with a fine linen cloth. A stout woman comes and takes the tablecloth away. Maybe she doesn’t care much for the puddles made from our dripping skirts and dripping hair. But when I plunk the bag of money on the table, oh, that’s different, isn’t it?
“What’ll you have, my dears?” she asks, all sweetness.
And we dream up all kinds of fine things we’ve never eaten but only heard of: mutton chops with mint jelly, fish pudding and lamb cooked in cabbage, sweet buns stuffed with almond paste and fragrant with cardamom, cream porridge sprinkled all over with cinnamon. We each try a cup of coffee, too, though we soon have our fill of that.
“I’ve been wondering,” I tell Greta. “What was it that killed old Svaalberd? Surely a couple of missing fingers or toes can’t kill a person, or half the parish would be dead by now.”
“I think he died of lockjaw,” Greta says matter-of-factly. “Like Mr. Christiansen did after he had that wound in his leg.”
Lockjaw? I had not thought of that, but there is sense to it. Old Mr. Christiansen did act the same strange way before he died. Like Svaalberd’s, his wound got nasty-looking and his jaw locked up, so he got that strange sneer on his face. Then he started twitching and jerking, just like the goatman did.
Even so, that doesn’t lessen my guilt. For if I hadn’t chopped his fingers off, he wouldn’t have had the wounds. And if he hadn’t had the wounds, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten lockjaw. And if he hadn’t gotten lockjaw, he wouldn’t be dead.
The coffee turns even more bitter in my mouth, and I vow to be a better person from here on out. No more lying, thieving, or maiming of any kind.
“I have been wondering about something,” Greta says, “and I want you to tell me the truth.”
I brace myself for her question. What will I tell her about why and how Svaalberd really died? Or for that matter, any of the things she might well ask?
But instead of any of those questions, Greta says, “Was it really like that? About Papa and the seven-headed troll? Or were you maybe … stretching the story a bit?”
“Well, yes,” I say, considering. “I suppose it’s possible the troll had only three heads.”
The innkeeper clears away all the dishes and bowls and spoons and then addresses us. “You two shouldn’t be riding about at this hour,” she scolds. “You’ll be wanting a bed.”
This is how Greta and I find ourselves in a bed fluffy with something other than straw for ticking, with a down coverlet that is as soft as a cloud, and everything is just as if we were the three princesses in the mountain-in-blue (before they were taken away by trolls and made to scratch their many heads, of course). Except now instead of three, we are only two.
Greta falls asleep right away, but perhaps the bed is too soft, the coverlet too warm, everything too fine for the likes of me.
I look at the dirty old gunnysack lying there on the floor by the bed. In that sack is old Svaalberd’s gold, and in there, too, is the Black Book. I rise from the bed and tiptoe to the sack, reach inside, and pull out the book, blacker even than the night. Perhaps I should throw it away? I’ve heard that those who try such a thing find that it flies right back. The book can’t be burned by any ordinary fire, so it’s said. Once you own it, it’s yours. In a way, it owns you.
In the morning, the innkeeper hands me a slip of paper with words and numbers written all over it.
When she sees me studying it, she says, “It’ll be one kroner for your bed and two for your meals and five skillings to board your horse.”
“That much?” I say, by way of saying something.
I take out the leather pouch and count out eight coins and put them on the counter.
The innkeeper frowns at the coins. She picks one up and looks at both sides. “This is the old money,” she says. “Maybe you still use it up in the hills, but here in town we use the new money. It takes one hundred of your coins to make one of these.” She pulls a coin out of her apron pocket and holds it up.
“No doubt I have some of those, too,” I promise, pouring the contents of the pouch out on the counter.
The innkeeper picks out coin after coin. She counts out many, many of the skillings and shoves four coins back at me.
“But …” I stammer. “That can’t be. That’s all of it! That’s all the money we have!”
“Well, then,” she says. “You’d best go straight home.”
“We’re not doing anything of the kind,” I say. “We’re going to America.”
“Well!” she exclaims, her whiskery eyebrows inchworming their way across her forehead. “You are in a conundrum,” says she. When I squint at her, she explains that it means a puzzle—a bit of a pickle. “For you’re going to need quite a lot more money than that! Not to mention the proper documents. Have you got your papers?”
“Papers?”
“You’ll be needing your baptism certificate and so on,” she says.
This is the first I’ve heard of baptism certificates, but I don’t tell her that.
“We have what we need,” is what I say.
She looks at me sadly and pushes two of the bigger coins back to me across the counter. “Use these coins wisely,” she says. “They’re only a trifle, but a mere trifle is often enough when luck is on your side.”
We Come to a Church
Mary, Mary—
She sat
on the stair,
and prayed to Our Lord,
to make the rain stop;
over peaks,
over trees,
over all God’s angels.
hat’s a spell to stop rain,” I tell Greta, as we ride along in the drizzle. “The goatman used to say it, and the rain always stopped.”
“It really works?” Greta asks.
“Maybe not always right away,” I explain. “But eventually, the rain always stopped when he said that. Anyway, we shan’t need it when we get to America, because it never rains like this there.”
“That sounds lovely,” Greta says, sighing.
“All the time the sun is not shining here in Norway, it is shining in America. So for every day it’s glum and cloudy here, that’s a sunny day over there.”
“It must be very sunny there, then, for here we never lack for gloomy days.”
There is nothing to be said to that, for that is truth, and today is the gloomiest of all. So we ride for a bit in silence.
Well, not entirely in silence, for there’s quite a bit of stomach rumbling to be heard. There’s naught left in the sack except for crumbs, and those are mush.
“In America,” I tell Greta, “there is so much to eat, all you have to do is reach out—like that—and pluck a plum or an apple off a tree. Cloudberries—everywhere! And not just for a handful of days or a week or two, but on and on and on, months and months of them.”
“Mmmm.” Greta sighs and snuggles closer to me.
“And cream! The grass has so much fat in it, it’s all the cows give is cream. You only have to stir it once or twice and it’s butter.”
I don’t mean to be lying, only exaggerating a little to keep Greta’s mind off the rain. But she’s believing me, I can tell, so it must be lying. But she’s not thinking of her hunger anymore or how cold and wet and miserable we are, so is it wrong?
“Are we going back for Spinning Girl now?” Greta asks.
“About Spinning Girl there is a conundrum.”
“A comumdrum?” Greta says.
“Conundrum,” I correct her. “It means a knotty kind of puzzle. One you can’t think yourself out of, quite.” We ar
e in a pickle, Greta and me. We have nothing much in the way of money, I see that now. The treasure was no treasure at all, just the goatman’s hard-earned money. Or Spinning Girl’s hard-earned money from the yarn she spun, more like. And I squandered it all on a meal and a bed.
On the other hand … there’s a horse under us, and a saddle, and there’s a bridle, too, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. Perhaps it’s not our horse, but that’s a trifle.
If we go back for Spinning Girl, though, we’ll have her and no horse. If we have no horse, we’ll be back to walking. If we go back to walking, we shan’t reach the harbor before the ship leaves for America. And we’ll have no money, nor anything worth selling when we get there, either. And then how will we buy our passage and our food and the like?
“But are we going back for Spinning Girl now?” Greta asks again.
I feel as if my insides are made of hard knots and pebbles, balls of sticky tallow, tangles of yarn, and lumps of ash. If we go back, then we go backward in time, and Greta and I will be milkmaids and serving girls forever, or married to smelly goat men, with no say in what we do or where we do it. In America, goat girls can become princesses or parsons, or whoever they want to be. I don’t know if that is generally so, but that’s the way it’s going to be for Greta and me. And anyway, there’s another problem. We’re thieves, or at least I am, and could be considered a murderer besides, and there are laws against such things and prisons, too, and I suppose a prison wouldn’t be much of an improvement over the goatman’s farm.
I shift my weight on Dapple and sit up straight, feeling all these lumps and tangles and knots and stones align inside me and lock into place like armor. And then I say, “No, Greta. No, we are not.”
I won’t think about Spinning Girl’s smile as she wove us golden crowns. I won’t think about her laughter at playing what she thought was a game. I won’t remember how she wiped the blood off my face and helped me clean the filth from my dress the day Svaalberd threw me in the mud or how she braided my hair in plain and fancy ways. And I will not think of our last embrace when I pinned Mama’s brooch on her dress. I will tell myself, as I’m telling Greta, that “there’s the perfect place for her. For wasn’t the farmwife kind, and didn’t she tell me how she had always wanted a daughter? And didn’t they have plenty to eat? And didn’t they get a fine bargain, too? Why, Spinning Girl will be more useful to them than a stable full of horses. For in exchange for their horse, they’ll get as much fine yarn as they’ll ever want. For didn’t the farmwife admire her spinning, too?”