“Yes, we might need to do that.”
Myna whistled for Glennie, who came racing after them. A pair of ducks took flight a bit farther on and raced, frightened, out over the water.
“That one we’ll have to pick up together.”
Alek walked over to her and grabbed the other end of the plank. They carried it a good way up onto land and then they threw all the other pieces they found nearby on top.
The air was heavy with moisture and made the cliffs black and slippery. The sea and the sky blended together in a dusk-gray mist.
“We’re turning around now,” said Myna, and pulled her shawl up around her head.
Alek threw the last stick down and poked his ice-cold hands into his clammy pockets. A flock of terns raced by on their flight from the darkness and cold.
“Wood fire smells the best anyway,” said Myna, and hid her hands under the half-wet shawl.
Alek bent down over a rounded board from a barrel lid and threw it on the next pile they passed. A pair of silver-gray branches slid to the sides and landed on the ground. Myna picked them up and returned them to the pile before they continued.
“And Ravnar came home.”
Alek nodded. In the distance a sheep bleated for its flock.
“He was my friend once.” She cleared her throat. “And maybe he can become so again.”
* * *
When they reached Crow Cove, Myna went home and Alek continued across the bridge toward the potato house. Tink had lived in one end for a long time, and they had stored potatoes in the other. But now Ravnar and Tink and Frid had expanded the stable with a storage room, so that there was room for Ravnar in the house.
Alek stepped into the freshly whitewashed parlor. Ravnar and Frid each sat in a chair with their legs stretched out toward the warmth. Alek hung his wet jacket on a nail and looked around for a third chair, but there was none.
“You can sit here,” Frid suggested, and closed his legs and patted his thigh.
Alek hesitantly settled down, carefully using Frid’s arm as a backrest.
The flame from a single candle was reflected in the glass in the little window that faced the hills. The light from the fire in the hearth billowed golden across the snow-white walls while the smoke from Ravnar’s pipe mellowed the clammy smell of lime.
Alek’s cold fingers began to prickle, and the warmth spread slowly through his body. The fire made small, crackling noises, Ravnar puffed on his pipe, and the rain hit the window and startled the little light.
Alek let his head sink onto Frid’s shoulder and allowed his late afternoon sleepiness to take over. Boards and branches, planks and barrel lids made patterns behind his closed lids. Silver-gray wood, silk-smooth wood, washed free of all unnecessary colors, kindling and timber and sea-chest wood from ships that would never sail again.
The door in the hallway opened, and Alek opened his eyes and hurriedly stood up.
Cam poked his head in.
“Are you coming over for dinner?”
They were.
16
Winter was upon them with violent storms and still, rain-heavy weather. The woolly daylight came slowly and faded quickly again. Foula’s spinning wheel spun the days together in an even thread.
The wilted grass became dark with water, and the dried seaweed on the beach swelled to black, solid heaps. The driftwood lay in piles in the rain. Only the best pieces, which would be used for gates and hatches, had been stored in the stable.
The cow chewed the sweet-smelling hay, which offered winter shelter for the mice that had been babies that summer. The horses moved their heavy heads and finally accepted the narrow quarters. Everyone slept late and went to bed early.
Midwinter was near.
* * *
Cam lay sleeping with his round cheek pressed flat, so that his lower eye was forced into a narrow slit. His mouth was open and a thin thread of spittle had found its way from mouth to pillow.
Alek had lain the same way last year. But this year he would not give in. He stared with dry, tired eyes at the little light that would continue burning for a long time yet.
Eidi and Sigge had sung and played all the songs they knew, and all the stories had been told. In the silence Thala got up and rustled around in the corner. Then she came over to Alek and placed something in his lap. Something white and soft.
In the low light he could make out that it was a shirt, with light-blue stars embroidered on the yoke and white mother-of-pearl buttons.
He pulled off his old worn shirt and pulled the new one over his head. It smelled sun-warm and spicy and was a little too long in the sleeves, but he just rolled them up.
Then he turned to thank her but she had gone over to Ravnar and had given him a shirt of shiny dark-blue silk with silver-gray stars.
Frid put a bit more kindling on the fire so they could admire the presents. The flames created a half circle of light out into the room. The blue fabric gave Ravnar’s hair a green metallic sheen like a bird feather and his skin shone yellow like old ivory.
“You look handsome, too,” said Myna, and Alek knew that Ravnar was the most handsome.
* * *
The wind had died down and a faint light spread outside the windows. The flame in the skull sputtered, but it fought for its life. Finally you couldn’t see it anymore in the daylight that came streaming in. Then it gave up and let the wick drown in the last bit of wax.
Frid walked over and opened the door. The fresh, cool morning air chased the last shadows from Dark Night. It was Light Morning, and everyone went outside. Only Ravnar and Alek remained standing in the doorway.
“If only I had had a gift for her as well,” exclaimed Ravnar, pushing his hands into his pockets and gazing at Thala, who was on her way down to the beach.
There the sun’s rays had reached land while the rest of the cove still lay in shadow. A memory appeared in Alek’s mind. Something pale and sad, something bloodred and heavy.
“I have a present,” he told Ravnar, and raced across the bridge and into his room.
Where was it, his little skin pouch? He looked through all his pockets and found it at last hanging on a leather cord on the hook beneath his oldest pants.
It was still there, the gold ring with the bloodred stone that he had gotten from the girl in the harbor square and had then totally forgotten.
He pressed the ring into his fist, ran back to Ravnar, and let it drop into his hand.
“Where did you get that?”
Alek told him.
“Perhaps it’s a sad present.”
“I don’t have anything else,” said Alek.
“I don’t either,” said Ravnar, sticking the ring in his pocket and setting off after Thala.
* * *
“Come on, Glennie!” Alek called, and the dog came leaping.
Together they walked across the bridge and by Myna’s house, where she and Kotka were probably already sleeping in each other’s arms.
The sun had reached the hill behind the house, and Alek crawled up into the wet, wilted grass. From here he could look out over all of Crow Cove. The houses still lay in shadow, but the sun hit the smoke from the chimneys, and out at the water’s edge the stream spread its silver fan toward the glittering sea. Thala and Ravnar had melted together into a little dark spot that was moving away from him.
“Come on, Glennie!” he yelled, but the old dog had run back and lain down in her place in front of the door.
So he continued over the hill and down onto the beach. The sea was as mild as breath and blue as a gaze. Alek found a small flat stone and skipped it across the shiny surface.
He went on and found another and another.
Finally he reached the place where they had found his little horse, a very long time ago. Back then he had been so little that he was still called Doup and couldn’t stay awake on Dark Night.
There was nothing left. The hard storms had long ago moved all the bones and washed the beach clean.
; He sat down on a stone close by. He was at once dizzy with exhaustion and wide awake. His gaze slid out to sea, out over the edge of the world, all the way to nothing.
And in one glimpse he understood what he saw. The waves rise to lie down again. Ships are built and ships are lost. Small horses live and small horses die. You are born and you disappear in an unending chain.
And his time on earth was right here, right now, in the clear morning where his life tied the world together in an eternal moment.
THE CHILDREN OF CROW COVE SERIES
BY BODIL BREDSDORFF
The Crow-Girl
Eidi
Tink
Alek
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010
Text copyright © 1995 by Bodil Bredsdorff
English translation copyright © 2012 by Elisabeth Kallick Dyssegaard
Map copyright © 2012 by Jeffrey L. Ward
Originally published in Danish by Høst & Son under the title Alek: Børnene i Kragevig 4
Published in agreement with Høst & Son represented by ICBS, Copenhagen
All rights reserved
First hardcover edition, 2012
eBook edition, June 2012
mackids.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Bredsdorff, Bodil.
[Alek. English]
Alek / Bodil Bredsdorff ; translated from the Danish by Elisabeth Kallick Dyssegaard. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (The children of Crow Cove series)
Originally published in Danish under the title: Alek: børnene i kragevig 4.
Summary: Leaving behind Crow Cove and Doup, the name he was called there, Alek journeys to his heartbroken older brother’s home in the fishing village of Last Harbor, where Alek finds work at an inn and rescues a beautiful foreigner whose parents were killed by ship wreckers.
ISBN 978-0-374-31269-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-374-12345-1 (e-book)
[1. Conduct of life—Fiction. 2. Brothers—Fiction. 3. Taverns (Inns)—Fiction. 4. Shipwrecks—Fiction. 5. Orphans—Fiction.] I. Dyssegaard, Elisabeth Kallick. II. Title.
PZ7.B74814Ale 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011031670
eISBN 9780374123451
Alek Page 7