The girl remained sitting, filled with the feeling that this was where she belonged, this was home. Here by the water and rocks and grass, the goats, seals, circling eagles, and screeching gulls.
After a while she got up and headed back to the house. In the larder she dug out a little tin that she had hidden a long time ago. There was a bit of tea left in it, and they were going to have it this very morning because it was such a lovely day.
She slipped into the main room, rolled up the hides, and put them away. Next she lit a fire on the hearth and hung a kettle of water up over the fire. When the kettle boiled, she took it down and poured the tea leaves into the water.
Sugar! Wasn’t there also a bit of sugar someplace? She scurried back into the larder, where she rustled around like a mouse, until she found another tin with some sugar at the bottom. If only they had milk, too, how happy Grandmother would be. Scalding hot tea with milk and sugar! But they had not had milk for years. Not since the cow died.
She stole into the main room again, scraped a little sugar into a mug, and filled it with the steaming tea. Then she crept over to the settle bed.
Her grandmother was lying completely still. And before the girl had felt her hand, she knew that her grandmother was dead.
Her open eyes saw nothing. Her chin had fallen down, revealing the few small stumps of teeth in her gums. Her hands lay folded on top of the blanket, locked together like a knot in a rope. She was no more alive than the rocks along the shore, and she was just as immobile.
The girl was about to ask what she should do. But suddenly it dawned on her that this was exactly what she could not do, what she could never do again.
Then she sat down on the floor and burst into tears.
* * *
She cried for a long time. Her weeping was like a mighty wave that washed over her. Later it became a flowing stream, leaving her at last as warm and dry as a rock in the sun. Not a tear was left.
She realized that, just now, she did not need to ask her grandmother what she should do. She knew she should bury her. In the valley behind the crest of the hill. Beside Grandfather.
She found an old blanket and placed it on the floor next to the settle bed. Then she took hold of her grandmother and pulled her down onto the blanket. She tied the blanket together at the bottom and then grasped the opposite end and pulled. And so she started on the long journey, from the house, by the path along the brook, to the other side of the hill’s crest, and up into the valley.
It took her all morning to reach her grandfather’s grave. When she finally got there, she was so tired that her legs shook beneath her and everything reeled before her eyes. She sat down until her dizziness subsided. Then she walked back to the house to rest.
The first thing she saw when she came into the main room was that the fire had died down. She had completely forgotten about it. Quickly, she plucked a bit of wool out of her grandmother’s big gray shawl, which was hanging on the back of the chair. Then she grabbed a stick and poked around in the ashes until she finally found a single ember. Placing the tuft of wool over it, she blew carefully. The fire took hold of the fine hair and a flame leapt up. Without hesitating, she held a twig of heather out over the flame, and the fire ran farther up into the dry whisk. She piled on more heather, then small pieces of driftwood, and at last a large log. The flames caught hold of it, and the fire was saved.
She sat down on the floor and drank the cold, sweet tea that remained in the mug. She had to make do with the one mugful, for the tea she had let stand in the kettle had become so bitter that it was undrinkable.
Before leaving the house again, she fed the fire a piece of timber that was so large it would be able to burn for many hours. Then she walked back to the valley.
* * *
The valley opened up down toward the brook. Far away you could see the white house, bright against all the greenery. Behind it the sea shimmered in the sunlight and became one with the whitish blue sky.
The girl laid her grandmother a couple of meters from the heap of stones where her grandfather lay. She carefully covered her grandmother’s body and face with the blanket before she began to gather stones and slabs of rock.
First, she made a square border of very large rocks around the body. Inside it she piled up all the stones she could find, until her grandmother was completely hidden. Then she stepped back a bit and compared her grandmother’s grave with her grandfather’s. She could see that the pile was not yet large enough if the two graves were to be the same. So even though sweat was dripping from her and her legs sometimes failed her, bringing her to her knees, she continued. Each time she had to go farther and farther away to find new stones.
At last she was satisfied. Long wisps of hair stuck to her cheeks, and both her knees were bleeding, but she no longer noticed. She sat down on a rock a short distance from the graves and looked out across the sea. The sun was just about to set.
A song! Now she was supposed to sing a song. Her grandmother had taught her that. But the only one she could recall was an old sea chanty:
From the sea have I come
and to the sea my way I wend.
I shall meet my one true love
and be parted from my friend.
She could not remember any more, so instead she began to sing something she herself made up:
My grandmother has passed away from me.
My grandmother is dead.
She was so sweet, so sweet to me,
but now she is dead.
The sun had disappeared, leaving the sky a grayish pink, which turned grayish blue if one looked at it long enough.
The girl could not think of anything more, so she began to sing about what she was seeing:
A crow is flying alone.
My grandmother is alone.
No, she is not alone,
for four sparrows are flying past,
and two crows are flying past.
Two crows never fly alone,
my grandmother is like a crow flying,
a crow that is off with its mate flying.
Two crows never fly alone,
and death is never, ever past.
Then she grew silent. For the last sentence she had sung had come all by itself. She did not understand it, and it frightened her.
The two crows disappeared as two black dots out over the sea, and she got up from the cold rock and walked home.
4
Several days later she saw the two crows again. They came flying from out over the sea, across the cove, and farther down along the shore.
It seemed as if they were calling to her. She stood still, listening to their hoarse screeches and watching them until they had disappeared. Then she turned around and walked back to the house.
It was clean and warm in the room. The floor was swept, and the flames were dancing in the hearth, but it was much too quiet. She missed the sounds of her grandmother in the settle bed, the coughs, the rustling with the blanket and pillows, her voice—especially when she said, “My chick.”
The girl could hear that voice inside her all the time. It kept her going, got her to bank the fire with coals in the evening and to start it in the mornings. It got her to go out and gather mussels, to clean and sort them; indeed, it got her to eat them. She had the feeling that, without that voice, she would have just sat down and waited to die.
But now the two crows had interfered. “Come along, come along,” they had screeched, showing her the way, and she could not stop thinking about them.
In the middle of the night she awoke with a start and did not know whether it was the memory of her grandmother’s cough or the crows’ screeching that had awakened her. It was completely dark in the room, and from one corner came a quiet scurrying.
Even though the girl knew that it was only the mouse, she called out into the darkness: “Grandmother, is it you?”
And the mouse answered by becoming quiet as a mouse.
* * *
The next day she
did not start the fire. Instead she swept up the ashes from the hearth, carried them down to the beach, and scattered them along the water’s edge. She went back to the house and lifted up the lid of the settle. There, she found a large kerchief, which she spread out on the floor. She placed her few pieces of clothing on it and tied it securely to her grandfather’s old walking stick.
Then she arranged her grandmother’s large gray woolen shawl over her black dress, swung the walking stick up on her shoulder, carefully locked the door behind her, and began to walk down along the shore.
* * *
After many days, during which she had stayed close to the water, living off raw mussels and sleeping on the ground, she reached a hamlet. A small group of houses stood on both sides of a narrow fjord, which cut its way inland. Farthest in, the fjord was no broader than a large stream, but it was deep, so people could sail their small dories all the way up, where they were protected from the sea.
The houses were whitewashed and resembled her grandmother’s, and they all stood with their broad sides turned out toward the narrow road that ran along the water.
The girl had never seen so many houses in one place, but there were not many people—two men in a boat at sea and a pair of toddlers who came running toward her from one of the houses. Shortly before reaching her, they stopped and stared, perplexed.
The door of the house was thrown open, and a housewife rushed out, grabbed one child with each hand, ran into the house again, and slammed the door behind her. The girl could hear the children crying and the woman scolding.
The door of another house opened, and another housewife came out and walked right up to her. She was older than the first, smaller and broader. Her hair was pulled back from her forehead and twisted into a tight knot on top of her head.
“Who in the world are you, and what are you doing here?” she asked, gazing intently.
The girl did not know how to answer.
“What’s your name?” asked the woman impatiently.
“My grandmother called me her chick. But she’s dead now,” the girl explained. She could not remember if there had ever been anyone who had called her anything else.
“‘Chick,’” snapped the woman. “That’s not a name, that’s what something is.”
She stood for a bit looking at the girl with the large gray shawl over her black dress, her dark hair gathered at her neck in a braid and her curved nose sticking out from her thin face.
“But you do resemble a crow, girl,” she said.
“Yes,” the girl hurried to say. “That’s what I’m called. ‘Crow-Girl.’”
“Peculiar name,” mumbled the woman, scratching the corner of her mouth with one finger. “I hope you’re not a bird of ill omen.”
The girl shook her head.
“Are you a good worker?” the woman asked.
“Oh, yes,” answered the girl. “I can light a fire and gather driftwood and mussels and sea kale and snails, and carry water, clean fish, and cook. I can feed a whole family,” she said, and added in a low voice, “that is, if it isn’t too big.”
“Can you clean house, too?” the woman wanted to know.
“Yes,” said the girl.
“Well then, I guess you had better come with me,” said the woman, and started for the house.
The girl followed.
“Thanks … uh,” she said.
“You can call me madam,” said the woman over her shoulder.
“That’s a funny name.”
“Name,” barked the woman. “That’s no name; that’s something you are. Come on, now!”
* * *
The main room was off a hallway just as at home. The room was bigger, but because there was a lot more furniture in it, it seemed smaller. Large chests and settles lined all the walls, and out in the middle of the stone floor stood a table with chairs around it.
What really distinguished it from the room in her grandmother’s house was the pervasive aroma of food. A large black iron pot bubbled over the hearth, and the girl could feel her nostrils quivering as she approached it.
“Are you hungry?” asked the woman.
The girl nodded.
“Well, if it can’t be otherwise, you had better have something to eat. I usually don’t believe in paying before the work is done.”
The woman went over to the pot, lifted the lid, and ladled a large portion into a bowl. She took a wooden spoon from a drawer in the table and pointed at a chair with a wicker seat next to the fireplace.
“You’ll sit there,” she said.
The girl quickly sat down.
“Well, you could probably do with some flesh on your bones,” said the woman. “Otherwise we’ll surely not get much use of you.” She handed the bowl to the girl.
Mutton boiled with potatoes until the meat was as tender as butter and the potatoes had completely dissolved and were infused with the taste of the meat. And afterward a cup of scalding hot tea with milk and sugar.
“You can start by sweeping,” said the woman, taking the empty mug, “since you surely won’t mind working for your food?”
“No, not at all,” said the girl, and hurriedly grabbed the broom.
“First, put up the chairs,” said the woman. “How else will you manage to sweep where they’re standing?”
* * *
The whole day the girl worked, scrubbed, fetched water, cleaned fishnets, and carried in wood from the shed behind the house. In the evening came her reward: a large bowl of soup boiled on the mutton bones, thick with chopped kale, root vegetables, and large oats, and a hunk of bread along with it.
The neighbor woman had stopped by.
“So, Crow-Girl, do you like the food?” she asked, and it sounded almost friendly.
The girl nodded.
“Who in the world is she?” the neighbor wanted to know. “I was quite frightened when I saw her standing out in the road. There’s such a lot of riffraff passing by.”
“It is surely half a year since we last had strangers in these parts,” objected the woman. “But you are right, riffraff they were.”
She took a gulp of tea and continued. “As for this one, she is only a poor orphaned thing. She lived with her old grandmother, who’s now dead. Yes, it’s a hard world. But now she can stay here, so she won’t have to knock about on the roads any longer.”
“You’re a good person,” said the neighbor, and got up. “I had better get over to the little ones again, before they do too much damage. Although I have tied them to the bed. Lucky are they who have such a big girl in the house. And since you don’t have someone yourself, you’ll surely get some use of her.” She nodded in the direction of the Crow-Girl.
“That’s not what it’s all about,” said the woman, offended. “I can manage by myself. But to earn one’s daily bread has never hurt anybody.”
“No, no, I certainly didn’t mean it like that. I realize that you have taken her in because you are so good-hearted.”
The woman ate up the words and nodded, satisfied, and they parted at the door as if they were good friends.
A short while later, her husband came home. He and a neighbor had been out fishing, and he brought back a bucket of cod, which the Crow-Girl was put to cleaning and salting so that they could later be dried on the rocks behind the house. Afterward, the woman accompanied the girl up the stairs to the attic, where a fishing net hung stretched out like a hammock. There lay a pillow and a blanket, and that was her bed.
Feeling full and tired, she clambered up, wound the shawl and blanket around herself, and fell asleep.
5
The next morning she awoke not knowing where she was. She sat up and the hammock began to swing from side to side. A dusty beam of sunlight from a peephole in the gable exposed a sheep’s carcass dangling from a hook in the ceiling. Behind the hammock, over by the chimney, hung a couple of legs of lamb and some bundles of dried flatfish.
A voice called from below, and the Crow-Girl remembered at once where she
was.
When she came down and opened the door to the main room, the woman was standing there wailing. “Just look at my shawl,” she said. “It got caught on the firewood basket, and now a hole’s been torn in it. I surely can’t go anywhere with that.”
The shawl was old, and the hole looked as if it was from wear.
“But perhaps I could borrow yours, just while I go visiting,” said the woman.
“Yes, of course,” said the Crow-Girl, and handed her the shawl.
“It’s a very lovely shawl,” said the woman. “Wherever did you get one like this? Surely you have gotten it honorably, for you are, of course, not also a magpie stealing everything it sees, are you?” And then she laughed as if she had said something funny.
“It was my grandmother’s.”
“Well, anyone could say that,” and then the woman pinched the Crow-Girl’s cheek and shook her slightly until she noticed her glance. “Well, well, little one, you can surely understand that I’m kidding.”
The Crow-Girl nodded but did not think it was at all funny.
“Can you make mutton stew?” the woman asked.
“I can learn,” said the Crow-Girl.
“There are potatoes out in the shed. Peel them. And then carve a piece of meat from the sheep’s carcass that’s hanging in the attic, and cut that into pieces. Put it in the pot, alternating meat and potatoes and a bit of salt, then add a little water. And don’t let the fire go out.”
“I never have,” said the Crow-Girl.
“Well, well,” mumbled the woman, “there’s always the first time. And no taking anything that doesn’t belong to you.”
* * *
The Crow-Girl started to prepare the food, peeling potatoes, cutting meat, filling the pot. She enjoyed being alone in that large room. Then she suddenly heard a deep cough from the other end of the house. She had left the door to the hall open to let in some fresh air; otherwise she would never have noticed the sound in that long house.
The Crow-Girl--The Children of Crow Cove Page 2