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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
The Children of Crow Cove Series
Copyright
1
Near a little cove where a brook ran out to the sea stood three houses. One of them was not really a house anymore. It was a ruin, with only the lowest part of the walls still standing.
The second house was in better shape, but it was also unoccupied. There were holes in the roof, and rain and wind had scoured off the whitewash, so you could see the gray stone it was made of.
The third house was all the way down by the sea. It was white with a chimney at each gable, and in it lived a young girl and her grandmother.
The cove was completely quiet except for the brook’s gurgling and the sound on the narrow shore of pebbles being driven back and forth across the rocky ground by the swells. An eagle let itself be carried by the wind out across the water. A wisp of smoke was rising from one of the chimneys.
Inside the house the girl was stoking up the embers on the hearth. She dug them out from beneath the ashes, laid dry twigs of heather across them, and blew and blew until the fire caught and clear little flames brightened her face.
Her eyes were dark blue, nearly black in the dim light. She had a large curved nose and dark, bristly hair that was very short in front where the fire had singed it.
As the fire crackled in the heather, the girl added large pieces of firewood, driftwood smooth as silk and bleached gray by the sea.
“You’re taking the old pieces, aren’t you?” said a voice from the settle’s pull-out bed.
“Yes, of course,” said the girl.
“Because you know if it’s too fresh, there’ll be tarry soot in the chimney.”
The old woman coughed a bit and turned over. “It’s all that salt in it. And tarry soot smells bad.”
“It’s all right, Grandmother,” the girl said to calm her. “It’s lain over behind the house for the last half year, so rain has washed out all the salt.”
“That’s good, my chick. Come! Give me your hand!”
The girl sat down on the chair beside the settle bed and put her hand in the old woman’s.
“Tell me how my hand feels,” her grandmother said.
The girl wrapped her fingers around it and thought a moment. “It’s warm and dry,” she said. “And, in a way, smooth, even if it’s wrinkled. A bit like driftwood.”
“Can you move it?” asked the grandmother.
The girl gently bent the old woman’s fingers and then straightened them out again. “Like that?” she asked.
“Exactly,” said her grandmother. Then she cleared her throat, and because she did so, she began coughing again. When she stopped, her voice was a little stronger, and she said, “If I’m lying here completely still one day and don’t answer you, take my hand and feel it. If it’s cold and stiff and you can’t move it, it will be because I’m dead.”
The girl remained silent, squeezing the old woman’s hand tightly and wishing that those words had never been spoken. Outside, it was about to grow dark. The fire crackled, and its light made the shadows in the room dance on the whitewashed walls. The two didn’t move for a long time.
“I had better make dinner,” said the girl finally, and pulled her hand back.
The old woman had fallen asleep.
* * *
The fire was warming things up, yes, warming nearly too much if one got too close. The girl brought in the basket of mussels, which she had left on the bench outside the house. She had walked in cold water for several hours to gather them from the rocks. Afterward, she had scrubbed them in the brook.
Now, one by one, she carefully tapped them against the rim of the pot. If they still did not close their shells completely, she threw them outside the door. The seagulls would carry them away when it grew light.
Then she hung the pot on the hook above the fire and poured in a little water. When it boiled, she tipped the mussels down into the pot, put the lid on, and waited for a short while. When the pot was steaming, she took it off the fire, lifted the lid, and this time threw out the mussels that had not opened up.
There was the sound of a cough from the settle bed. Her grandmother had awakened again.
“Have you sorted them?” asked the old woman.
“Yes,” said the girl, “both before and after I boiled them.”
“A person can get sick from mussels if they are tainted. Then they are like pure poison. But when they are good, you can’t find anything better.”
The girl divided the mussels into two bowls and poured water from the pot over them.
There was no need for spoons, since each mussel lay in its shell and, along with a little of the broth, was easily scooped up.
The old woman ate a couple, then handed the bowl to the girl. “Here, my chick, you take the rest.”
“Aren’t you going to have any more?” asked the girl, astonished. She knew that this was her grandmother’s favorite food.
The old woman shook her head. “When you don’t move about, you don’t need so much,” she said.
When the girl had eaten all the mussels, she was still hungry, but she didn’t say so.
“Take all the shells, pour water over them, and boil them one more time,” said the old woman. “It makes a good, warming drink. Why don’t you give me a mug of it, too?”
* * *
As they sat, each with her own mug, the old woman on the settle bed and the girl on the chair, the grandmother began to speak:
“You will find two kinds of people in the world. Some say that there are the bad and the good. But it isn’t like that. Since what is good for one may be bad for another. No, that doesn’t work. You have to depend on your intuition.
“There are those who make you feel inside as if you are drinking a good, warm soup—even if you are hungry and the two of you have nothing to eat. In spite of that they nourish you.
“And then there are those who cause you to freeze inside, even if you are sitting before a roaring fire and have eaten your fill. Those you should keep away from. They are not good for you, even though others might say that they are good people. Remember that, my chick.”
The girl nodded.
“That’s the first rule. Then there’s the second, but I’ll wait until I’m lying down again to tell you.”
The girl helped her remove the pillows behind her back. The old woman began coughing when she lay down.
“Maybe you should give me a couple of them after all. It’ll be easier for me to catch my breath.”
And the girl placed two pillows under her grandmother’s head.
“I’m tired now,” said the old woman. “I’ll tell you about the second rule in the morning. You had better go to bed, too. You’ve had a long day.”
The girl took a hide, rolled it out on the floor before the hearth, and then pulled another one over her.
She lay for a while looking into the embers, which stirred as if they were living and breathing.
“Don’t lie too close to the fire,” she heard from the settle bed. “You know how a spark can fly.”
“Yes, Grandmother,” said the girl.
They lay there again for a short while.
“You’d better bank the fire now,” her grandmother said.
And the girl rose and scooped ashes on the coals so they would last until the next day. The room grew completely dark. There was a rustling from the settle bed.
“Grandmother,” the girl said.
“Mmm,” mumbled the old woman.
“Are you too tired to tell me about the North Star?”
“No, but I’ll make it short,” answered the old woman. “Can you remember your grandfather?”
“I best remember when we buried him.”
“Oh, but before he died, he said to me, ‘Once I am dead and you want to say hello to me, look up at the North Star; then I’ll wink at you.’”
“Does he?”
“You can see for yourself.”
“When you die, will you wink at me, too?” asked the girl.
“You’d better believe I will, my chick. But it won’t be tonight, and now you should go to sleep.”
The girl pulled the hide all the way up to her ears, so only her eyes peeked out, and she lay staring into the darkness. Then she saw a tiny coal winking at her from the ashes in the fireplace. Like a little star in the night sky. She thought about whether it might not be better to cover it. But before she managed to do so, she had fallen asleep.
2
A couple of days later it rained—a fine drizzle that drifted in from the sea, leaving beads of water on the blades of grass and making one’s skin cold.
The girl had gone out to gather driftwood. But it had been a long time since a big storm had passed through, so not much wood was to be had. She decided to go farther down the shore to take a look at the sea kale.
She put the bits of wood she had found in a pile, drew her shawl up about her head, and tucked the empty basket under her arm.
The sea kale grew near an area with a lot of seaweed. The girl used the seaweed to cover the plants, and when they pushed up through the darkness, their stalks were white and crisp.
She took her knife from her belt and dug into a clump of seaweed, and there, at the very bottom, some small pale shoots of sea kale stuck up from the sand like birds’ bones.
She brushed all the seaweed to one side and dug away the sand. The stems beneath were, in fact, much longer than the parts sticking up aboveground. But she was careful to leave a part of the plant. And she did not cover it up again. Now it had to gather strength until it could be forced again.
She took a couple more plants; the rest she let be, for it was always good to have a reserve supply to eat from. Then she put the basket down and walked along the shoreline over to some rocks that reached out into the water like a gnarled hand with many fingers. The cracks and clefts were teeming with small dark sea snails.
She began filling her cloth bag with snails. There was not much food from such small creatures, but they were quite pleasant to eat. It took such a delightfully long time. You could dig them out of their shells with a pin when they had been cooked.
The ebb tide had left several pools of water that would be cut off from the sea for a while. In one of them a little fish had been trapped. The girl speared it with her knife, cut open its belly, and cleaned it.
Immediately a couple of gulls flapped above her head, waiting for her to move so they could get their share.
The rain had forced its way through her clothes, but she had not noticed it. Now she began to freeze and hurriedly put the fish in the basket so she could go home.
* * *
Their house had two rooms, with a hall between them. One room they used as a larder and for storage. There, the girl emptied the basket before she went back out in the rain to get the driftwood she had collected.
She put it behind the house, farthest back in the row, so she could distinguish the new from the old. Then she went over to the other end and took a couple of pieces with her into the house, so they could dry out before they were to be used.
It was pleasantly warm in the main room. And completely silent.
“Grandmother,” she called.
No one answered.
She ran over to the settle bed and grabbed the old woman’s hand. It felt warm and dry and soft.
“I must have dozed off for a bit,” said her grandmother, pushing herself up. “Well, my chick, did you find anything?”
And the girl happily told her about all her discoveries.
“You can feed a whole family,” said the old woman, and patted her hand.
“A very little family,” said the girl. “It can’t be any smaller because then it would no longer be a family.”
She immediately regretted what she had said, since her grandmother replied, “Indeed, whatever is going to happen to you? If only I had a place to send you, but I don’t know anyone anymore.”
“I can manage on my own. I can feed a whole family, you know—if there are only two,” said the girl, laughing, even though she did not feel happy inside.
“Yes, of course, little one, that you probably can, but a person needs more than food. Even though it is nice to think that you can obtain food for yourself. In fact, you’re really good at it.”
“What shall I do with the fish? I had planned to put it in the clay fish-mold and roast it in the ashes, but we don’t have anything to grease the mold with.”
“That mold is so old and greasy that nothing can stick to it anymore. Just go ahead and use it.” Then the old woman leaned back against the pillows, while a hoarse cough shook her body.
Soon afterward the attack subsided, and it grew quiet in the room.
“Listen,” said the old woman a few minutes later. “There’s a big storm approaching, so there will be timber coming ashore.”
The wind slammed down the chimney and for a moment filled the room with smoke.
“Put more wood on, so the air in the chimney will be warm. Then that won’t happen again.”
The girl did as the old woman said.
* * *
“Now I will tell you the second rule,” said her grandmother when they had eaten the fish and the sea kale. “I feel quite well. It’s probably from all that good food you brought.”
The girl had noticed that the old woman had eaten scarcely anything, but she did not say so and got up only in order to seat herself on the chair beside the settle bed.
“You just sit there in front of the fire where it’s comfy, and eat your snails,” said her grandmother. Then she cleared her throat. “The second rule says that the door to a person’s heart can only be opened from within. If there is someone who will not let you in, it’s no use hammering and kicking and lamenting and complaining. For what if the door is ajar, and you push it shut? With some people it can never be opened again.”
The coughing returned, and the old woman stopped talking.
The girl finished the snails and sat looking into the flames, which were licking up along the sooty wood. The wind soughed out across the roof and shook the chimney, but did not come down it again.
“What else?” the girl asked.
“My word, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Maybe it’s something that you have to experience yourself. Maybe a person travels more easily through life without having all those words to carry along.”
“Yes, but I would like to hear it,” the girl protested.
“Well, all right, my chick, but now I think I must rest a bit.”
While the old woman dozed off again, the girl got up, cleared away the dishes, and laid more wood on the fire. A mouse scurried along the wall and disappeared into the darkness. The girl made her bed before the fire and was just about to lie down when the old woman began to speak:
“Then there is the third and most important r
ule. It’s about a person’s need to continue wishing and hoping, for then, at last, you will get what was wished and hoped for—even if it is in a completely different way from what you had imagined.”
The house grew quiet again except for the wind on the roof and the fire’s crackling. The girl remained sitting, staring into the flames. The only thing she wished and hoped for just now was that her grandmother would never get older, never die, never leave her all alone in the world. But how that wish would be fulfilled, she could not imagine.
In the flames there was no answer, only movement—movement and warmth, warmth and light. She continued to stare into them until everything grew quiet within her and time no longer existed.
3
It rained for many days, but early one morning the whitewashed walls were tinged a slight pink by the sun, which was about to rise. The girl stole carefully out of bed in order not to wake her grandmother. Then she slipped out the door and ran down to the brook.
The sun had just escaped the crest of the ridge. With a single little cloud as a faithful companion, it quickly changed colors, from red to orange to yellow, and ended in a piercing white. The light brought out the colors in the landscape and made the grass an even deeper green.
The sea lay blue and calm, gurgling against the rocks and pebbles on the shore. The brook murmured on its unending way to the sea. The girl sat down on a flat rock jutting out into the brook and looked at the flowing water. Then she stuck her hand into the water, cupping it slightly, and took a mouthful.
A black figure appeared in silhouette on the crest of the hill. The girl shaded her eyes with her hand and could see that it was one of the wild goats that had ventured out to the cove. With large twisted horns it was standing completely still, looking down at her. Suddenly it turned about with a start and disappeared behind the rocks.
The girl got up and walked along the shore to a place where two rows of rocks stretched out into the sea like long arms, forming a pool between them. She sat down on the bank and looked at the seals sunning themselves at the end of one of the reefs, which cupped itself like a hand dipping into the water.
The seals had seen her and raised their heads. One bellied its way down to the water and out into the pool and swam nearly all the way over to her. It positioned itself upright in the water and looked at her, its great dark round eyes peering directly into hers. That lasted a long time; the girl thought it seemed like an eternity. Then the seal turned around and swam back again.
The Crow-Girl--The Children of Crow Cove Page 1