Siss looked back before she began running. Unn was still standing in the lighted doorway, beautiful and strange and shy.
4
The Side of the Road
Siss ran home. At once she was struggling blindly with her fear of the dark.
It said: It is I at the sides of the road.
No, no! She thought at random.
I’m coming, it said at the sides of the road.
She ran, knowing there was something at her heels, right behind her.
Who is it?
Straight from Unn and into this. Had she not known that the way home would be like this?
She had known, but she had had to go to Unn.
A noise somewhere down in the ice. It ran along the flat expanse and seemed to disappear into a hole. The thickening ice was playing at making mile-long cracks. Siss jumped at the sound.
Out of balance. She had not had anything safe with which to set out on the return journey through the darkness, no firm footsteps striding along the road, as she had when she had walked to Unn. Thoughtlessly she had started running, and the damage was done. At once she had been abandoned to the unknown, who walks behind one’s back on such evenings.
Full of the unknown.
Being with Unn had made her over-excited – even more so after she had said goodbye and left. She had been afraid when she took the first steps, half running, and her fear had increased like an avalanche. She was in the hands of whatever it was at the sides of the road.
The darkness at the sides of the road. It possesses neither form nor name, but whoever passes here knows when it comes out and follows after and sends shudders like rippling streams down his back.
Siss was in the middle of it, understanding nothing, simply afraid of the dark.
I’ll be home soon!
No you won’t.
She did not even notice the frost tearing at her breath.
She tried to cling to the image of the living-room in the lamplight at home. Warm and bright. Mother and Father in their armchairs. Then their only child would come home, their only child who, they tell each other, must not be spoiled, whom they have turned into a game so as not to spoil her – no, it was no use, she was not there, she was between the things at the sides of the road.
But Unn?
She thought about Unn: splendid, beautiful, lonely Unn.
What’s the matter with Unn?
She stiffened in mid-stride.
What’s the matter with Unn?
She started once more. Something gave warning behind her back.
We are at the sides of the road.
Run!
Siss ran. There was a deep, powerful thunderclap somewhere in the ice on the lake, and her boots clattered on the frozen road. There was some comfort in it; if you couldn’t hear the sound of your own footsteps you might go crazy. She hadn’t the strength to run very fast any more but went on running all the same.
At last she could see the light at home.
At last.
To come into the light of the outside lamp!
They fell back, the things at the sides of the road, and once more turned into a mutter outside the circle of light, leaving Siss to go in to Mother and Father. Father had an office in the district, and now he was sitting comfortably in his chair, very much at home. Mother was reading as she usually did when she had time. It was not yet time for bed.
They did not jump up anxiously when they saw Siss, out of breath and covered in rime. They sat in their chairs and said calmly, ‘What in the world, Siss?’
She stared at them at first. Weren’t they afraid? No, not in the least. No, of course not – it was only she who was afraid, she who had come from outside. What in the world, Siss? they said placidly. They knew she could come to no harm. Nor could they say much less than, what in the world – since she had come home gasping and exhausted, her breath frozen into icicles on her upturned coat collar.
‘Is anything the matter, Siss?’
She shook her head. ‘I was only running.’
‘Were you afraid of the dark?’ they asked, laughing a little, as one ought at people who are.
Siss said, ‘Pooh, afraid!’
‘Hm, I’m not so sure,’ said Father. ‘But in any case you should be too big for that sort of thing now.’
‘Yes, you look as if you’ve been running for dear life the whole way,’ said Mother.
‘Had to come home before you went to bed. After all, you did say–’
‘You knew we shouldn’t be going to bed for some time yet, so you needn’t have –’
Siss was struggling with her frozen boots. She let them thud on to the floor.
‘What a lot of remarks you’re making this evening.’
‘What remarks?’ They looked at her in amazement. ‘Have we said anything?’
Siss did not reply but busied herself with her boots and socks.
Mother got up from her chair. ‘It doesn’t look as if you -’ she began, but stopped. Something about Siss stopped her. ‘Go in and have a wash first, Siss. It will make you feel better.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
It did, too. She took a long time over it. She knew she could not avoid being questioned. She came back again and found herself a chair, not daring to dive into her own bedroom. So there would be even more prying. She might as well face it.
Mother said, ‘That’s much better.’
Siss waited.
Mother said, ‘What was it like at Unn’s then, Siss? Was it fun?’
‘It was nice!’ said Siss sharply.
‘Doesn’t sound much like it,’ said Father, smiling at her.
Mother looked up, too. ‘What’s the matter this evening?’
Siss looked at them. They were being as kind as they knew how, she supposed, but -
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘But you do pry so. Pry about everything.’
‘Oh, come, Siss.’
‘Go in and get something to eat. It’s standing on the kitchen table.’
‘I’ve had something to eat.’
She had not, but serve them right.
‘Very well, you’d better go to bed then. You look worn out. And I expect it’ll be all right in the morning. Good night, Siss.’
‘Good night.’
She went at once. They understood nothing. Once in bed she realized how tired she was. She had strange, upsetting things to think about, but the warmth after the cold stole up on her, and she did not think for long.
5
The Ice Palace
‘Up you get, Unn!’
Auntie’s usual call, today as on any other ordinary school day.
But for Unn it was no ordinary day. It was the morning after the meeting with Siss.
‘Up you get, Unn!’ though there was no hurry to get to school. But Auntie was like that. She never let you wait till the last minute.
Unn heard the usual thunderclap from the steel-hard ice out there in the darkness when she put her head out. It was like a signal that the new day had begun. But inside her room during the night she had heard a dull thud, too, telling her, before she finally fell asleep, that now it was the very middle of the night. It had taken her a long time to get to sleep after the evening with Siss, thinking about everything that might happen, together with Siss.
It was colder than ever outside, said Auntie, who was getting the breakfast. Unn looked at the hard, glittering stars above the house. You could barely see that the eastern sky was growing paler: a stark, wintry pre-Christmas dawn. As the darkness thinned, trees appeared, white with rime. Unn watched them as she got ready for school.
For school and for Siss.
And she would not think about the other today!
At once it struck her how impossible it was to meet Siss again only a few hours after the awkward way in which they had parted. She had scared Siss so that Siss had run away. It was no use meeting her straight away! It was no use going to school today.
She looked out at the forest of rime-wh
ite trees in the brightening dawn. She would have to hide somewhere, get away, not meet Siss today.
Tomorrow it would be different but not just now. She could not look into Siss’s eyes today. She thought no further; the idea took hold of her with compelling force.
Siss, whom she was dying to meet, and yet -
In any case she would have to leave as she did every day. It was no use sitting down and saying that she didn’t want to go to school. Auntie would never accept that. It was too late to say she was ill, too – besides, she was not in the habit of making excuses. She looked at herself quickly in the mirror. She did not look the least bit ill; it was no use telling fibs. She would leave for school as usual and then make off before she met anyone. Make off and hide until school was over.
Even though Auntie had called and woken her, she said, when Unn was ready with her satchel, ‘Are you going so early?’
‘Is it any earlier than usual?’
‘I think so.’
‘I want to meet Siss.’ She felt a twinge as she said it.
‘Oh, of course. Are you in such a hurry?’
‘Mm.’
‘Then it’s no use my saying anything, I can see. Off you go. It’s a blessing your coat’s thick. It’s bitterly cold. Put on two pairs of mitts, too.’
Her words seemed like fences alongside the road to school; it was difficult to climb over them, and they led straight to school. But not today! Not after Siss had run away from her last night.
‘What is it, Unn?’
Unn jerked herself back. ‘Can’t find my mitts.’
‘Here. Right under your nose.’
She left the house in the fading darkness. She had to find out how to keep away today as soon as she was out of sight.
No, she had only one thought today: Siss.
This is the way to her. This is the way to Siss.
Can’t meet her, only think about her.
Mustn’t think about the other now, only about Siss whom I have found.
Siss and I in the mirror.
Gleams and radiance.
Only think about Siss.
With every step.
Now she was at the first rime-white tree that would hide her. There she left the road. She would have to keep hidden until she could come home again at the usual time without being questioned.
But what was she to do with herself? A whole long school day. And in such cold. The air she inhaled seemed to be trying to stop her breathing, to constrict it. It bit into her cheeks. But her warm coat, and being used to the cold this autumn, prevented her from feeling really chilled.
Boom! went the thunder in the black, shining steel on the frozen lake.
That was it! That was the solution. She knew at once what she would do. She would go to see the ice.
All by herself.
Then she would have plenty to do all day and could keep warm and everything.
The trip to see the ice had been discussed at school during the past few days. Unn had not taken part in it but had heard enough to know what it was all about and that they would have to go very soon, for the snow might come any day now.
There was a waterfall some distance away that had built up an extraordinary mountain of ice around it during this long, hard period of cold. It was said to look like a palace, and nobody could remember it happening before. This palace was the purpose of the outing. First along the lake to the outlet, and then down the river to the waterfall. A short winter’s day like this was just right for it.
Splendid, her day would be filled.
But I was going to see it with Siss!
She chased the thought away by thinking warmly and happily: I shall see it for the second time with Siss. That will be even better.
The ice on the lake shone so brightly that it did not look like ice at all. Steel-ice. Not a snowflake had fallen into the water when it froze, and not a snowflake had fallen since.
Now the ice was thick and safe. It thundered and cracked and hardened. Unn was running towards it. It seemed natural to run because of the cold. Besides, she was running in order to get quickly away from the part where people might be – since she was going to hide all day.
She had managed it. The urgent call – ‘Unn, come here!’ in Auntie’s kind voice – did not come. Auntie thought she was at school now.
But what would they make of it at school? She hadn’t thought about that.
That she was ill, for once. Of course. Would Siss think so, too? Perhaps Siss would understand why.
Unn ran across the frozen, stone-hard ground which echoed her footsteps. The rimed trees stood with glades in between. She ran zig-zag between the trees so as to keep herself hidden from peering eyes. Only now would she go out on the ice and walk along the edge of the lake.
She thought about Siss. Their meeting tomorrow – when everything had evened itself out a little and was not so impossible as today. All of a sudden she was no longer alone. She had found someone to whom she could tell everything, soon.
She ran in joy towards the ice, across the frosted ground and between the rimed birch twigs. They glittered like silver. For now it was almost light. Pale stalks stuck up, rimed and bent, with pale, broad leaves. Unn knocked them over as she ran, and the silver trickled dry as sand over her boots.
She thought with joy about the ice: thicker and thicker; that was how the ice should be.
It thundered at night. You would be awake, perhaps, and would think: still thicker.
The walls of the old log house cracked, too, in this cold. The timbers were shrinking, said Auntie. If you heard that at night it was no use saying thicker and thicker, you thought: Now it’s terribly cold, it’s thundering in the house.
She was at the lake shore now, and nobody seemed to have seen her, not the least glimpse so that they could tell anyone about her. The ice was deserted, as she had known it would be, so early in the day. Later in the morning the small fry would come; they were allowed to rough and tumble here as much as they liked, since the ice was as strong as rock without any dangerous or hidden rifts. The lake was big; it was an enormous expanse of ice.
It was fun looking through the black, shining ice close to the shore. Unn was not too grown-up to do so, lying flat on her stomach, her hands shielding her face to direct her gaze. It was like looking through a pane of glass.
Just then the sun rose, cold and slanting, and shone through the ice straight down to the brown bottom, with its mud and stones and weeds.
A little way out from the land the water was frozen solid. Even the bottom was white with rime and had the thick layer of steel-ice on top of it. Frozen into this block of ice were broad, sword-shaped leaves, thin straws, seeds and detritus from the woods, a brown, straddling ant – all mingled with bubbles that had formed and which appeared clearly as beads when the sun’s rays reached them. Smooth black freshwater stones from the lakeside were also transfixed in the block together with peeling sticks. Bent bracken stood in the ice like delicate drawings. Some were rooted in the bottom, some had been caught by the congealing water as they lay floating on the surface. Then the surface had stiffened, and it had continued to build itself up.
Unn lay watching, captivated by it; it was stranger than any fairy story.
I must see more …
She lay flat on the ice, not yet feeling the cold. Her slim body was a shadow with distorted human form down on the bottom.
Then she changed her position on the shining glass mirror. The delicate bracken still stood in the block of ice in a blaze of light.
There was the terrifying drop.
Where it was deeper the bottom and everything else were brown. Among the few weeds a small, black shellfish lay in the mud, moving one of its feet. Nothing came of it; it did not stir out of the slime or alter its position. But immediately beyond it the wall of mud plunged down almost sheer into a totally black chasm.
The terrifying drop.
Unn moved, and the gliding shadow followed her, fell right across the chas
m and disappeared as if sucked down so quickly that Unn flinched. Then she understood.
Her body quivered a little as she lay there; it looked as if she were lying in the clear water. Unn felt a fleeting dizziness and then realized afresh that she was lying safely on top of thick, steel-hard ice.
It was uncomfortable looking at the sheer drop all the same. It meant certain death for anyone unable to swim. Unn could swim now, but there had been a time when she could not, and one day she had gone over just such a fall. She had been wading – when suddenly there was nothing beneath her foot. She went rigid, knowing that she was just about to – but then a rough hand had snatched her back on to safe ground, back to her noisy companions.
Unn did not finish her train of thought about the horrid drop – a streak of light came from the darkness and up towards her: a fish moving as fast as an arrow, as if making straight for her eyes. She shrank aside, forgetting that there was ice between them. There was a stripe of grey-green back, then a jerk to one side and the flick of a glassy eye looking to see what she was.
That was all, down again into the depths.
And she knew very well what the little fish had wanted. Now he was down there already, telling the others, she imagined. In a way she liked it.
But the inquisitive fish had cut across the bond that kept her tied to the spot. She was cold, too. She got up and began half running, sliding on the slippery ice. Some of the time she was on land, running quickly across headlands that jutted out into the lake, then out on the ice again. It made her warm, and it was fun.
She did this for a long time; it was some distance to the outlet. But at last she arrived.
She neither saw nor heard the waterfall. It was lower down. Here there was merely a whisper of water as it travelled downwards, and up at the outlet it was quite still and noiseless.
This was the outlet of the great lake: a placid sliding of water from under the edge of the ice, so smooth that it was scarcely possible to see it. But a veil of vapour rose up from it in the cold. She was not conscious that she was standing looking at it. It was like being in a good dream. A good dream could be made out of so simple a thing. She felt no pangs of conscience because she was out on a walk without permission, and it would perhaps be difficult to find excuses for it. The placid water flowing away from the ice filled her with quiet joy.
The Ice Palace Page 3