The Christmas Lights

by Karen Swan

  ‘The Seven Sisters!’ Zac called back to her, pointing it out lest she might have missed it.

  She gave a thumbs-up sign. It had been one of the things they were most excited to see and seeing it up close sent a shiver up her spine. Photographs couldn’t – hadn’t – done it justice. They would need to get a shot there, somehow, for sure. But Anders didn’t take the rib closer to it as they passed; this wasn’t a sightseeing trip but a taxi, and he ploughed a straight, efficient channel through the very centre of the waterway.

  Far ahead, she could see the fjord turned again in an S bend, just as another waterfall came into view, almost opposite the Seven Sisters. It was bottle-shaped with a narrow neck and flared base and she knew from their research it was called The Suitor. How long ago it seemed now, that they’d been lying on the hammock in Samoa, the ocean beyond their toes, looking at the very images of this, and now, now they were here in the full stinging biting cold of it.

  She had assumed their driver would continue straight past this waterfall too but to her surprise, he was turning towards it – or at least, for a shallow bay that slunk around the corner just along from it, Gerainger now on the other side of this headland. He cut the throttle a little and circled in, bringing them closer. Lenny was already taking photos – ‘recce shots’, as he called them.

  ‘We are here,’ Anders said, beginning to let the boat drift in, straight towards the cliff-face. He jerked his chin and indicated to a set of iron rungs concreted into the stone.

  ‘That’s the landing point?’ Bo asked.

  He nodded.

  She suppressed a shudder of fear. But Zac threw his head back again and laughed, baring his tanned neck and bright white teeth and looking like an exotic puma in this northern territory. ‘Yes! I fucking love it! Let’s do this!’

  Lodal, June 1936

  The flames licked at the air, warming it up and colouring it pink. The sun had dropped below the ridge line at last, but it was still bobbing above the horizon like a balloon unable to sink. It was the end of their first full day alone and they were all sitting around the open fire outside the cabins, their blankets wrapped over their shoulders as they rubbed their hands together every so often to keep warm. Only early summer, the evenings were still fresh and behind them in the pens and stables, the animals were settling down for the night in a decrescendo of grunts, bleats and the patting of hooves in the straw beds. But the novelty of the space, the fresh air and the freedom, was infectious and although she was stiff and tired after a day spent scrubbing the dairy equipment, milking the goats and picking berries, Signy knew she couldn’t sleep yet.

  She was sitting closer to the fire than any of them, her cheeks hot to the touch as she listened, enraptured, to the story being told in a hushed voice.

  ‘. . . king had a daughter and he would only give her away to the person who could ride up the mountain, for there was a towering glass at the top, as smooth as ice,’ Brit said in a dramatic voice, her eyes wide. ‘The princess would sit at the very top of the mountain with three golden apples in her lap, and whoever could ride up and take the golden apples would have her hand in marriage and half the kingdom—’

  Signy gasped excitedly. This had always been her favourite folk tale, not because of the princess being wooed, but at the thought of those golden apples – perfectly round, perfectly shiny . . .

  ‘Now the princess was so beautiful, that everyone who saw her fell in love with her – whether they wanted to or not – and so, as you may imagine, all the princes and knights wanted to win her . . .’

  Ashild and Margit sighed; Kari and Signy exchanged wry looks. But Sofie was impassive, looking into the fire with a regal poise, as though this story was her fairy tale, foreshadowing her destiny. It made Signy start to see the look of quiet determination on her face as she listened to Brit’s words.

  Signy watched her for the rest of the story, seeing how Sofie glowed ever more radiantly at the story of all the men of the kingdom vying to win the princess’s hand and she felt her own good mood desert her. How easily Sofie had toyed with Nils. She could have any man she wanted. She didn’t love Nils, Signy knew it in her bones, but she might just snatch him so that no one else could have him. He was a farmer’s son and, whilst not wealthy, Sofie would know a security with him that her own father had never been able to guarantee: they would have their own homestead with animals and a store full of food. It was as much as she could reasonably hope for, even if she wished for much more.

  ‘I just love that story,’ Margit sighed, stretching her legs out, the flames throwing a flattering light on her gentle face and bringing out the richness of her long russet hair.

  ‘Me too,’ Ashild agreed. ‘I wish Karl would run up a mountain to win me,’ she said with an eye-roll and pointedly looking across the valley to the near horizon where the ground suddenly dropped away, swooping back down to the village. ‘It’s not like there’s any ice stopping him,’ she groaned.

  ‘Ah, poor Ashi,’ Margit chuckled, throwing an arm around her and drawing her closer on the timber log that served as their campfire perch. It had been common knowledge that Ashild had the most enormous crush on Karl Schumann, one of the carpenter’s sons, ever since he had caught her in his arms as she fell off a wall she had been running along on the way back from church last Easter. That he had simply been passing at the right time was a fluke in Signy’s opinion, but Ashi had taken it as proof of heroism and trailed after him ever since. Unfortunately, Karl himself had taken the incident as evidence of her already renowned clumsiness, something which looked especially bad against the contrived grace of Sofie as she drifted through the village in a froth of pretty dresses. ‘He is a fool not to see what is in front of his very eyes. One day . . . one day soon he will wake up and see what has been in front of him all along.’

  ‘You think?’ Ashild quipped, tossing a knowing glance in Sofie’s direction. Sofie was still staring wistfully into the fire, as though carried away on a dream, but Signy wasn’t falling for it; she fully suspected Sofie was listening closely to every word that passed.

  ‘Who knows, maybe he will wake up in time for the Midsummer’s Day picnic,’ Margit said optimistically. ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder.’

  ‘Or it makes the heart forgetful. He probably cannot even remember my name,’ Ashild sighed.

  Signy inwardly agreed with her; he probably couldn’t. Karl was not a bad boy; he was tall and strong and inoffensive to look at, but he had about as much wit and conversation as the cows. ‘You can do better than him anyway,’ Signy piped up.

  The older girls looked over in astonishment at her forthright certainty and she suddenly felt like a child at the adults’ table.

  ‘Can she?’ Sofie asked her, pinning her with sudden focus.

  Signy swallowed. Making eye contact with Sofie was like looking into a whirlpool – mesmerizing but dizzying. Had she been wrong? Was Karl the best Ashi could hope for?

  ‘And what about you? Is there anybody you love?’ Sofie’s stress on the word ‘you’ framed the statement as a rhetorical question; she always seemed to know exactly where Signy’s pinch spots were.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Signy muttered, staring into the fire.

  Sofie’s eyebrow twitched at her tone; it wasn’t sufficiently deferential for her liking. Though she may not be her better, she was certainly her elder and out here – here alone – that counted. ‘Well, what about Nils? We all know you’re sweet on him, even if he doesn’t,’ she said. ‘But he might look upon you differently if one of us was to tell him for y—’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ Signy cried.

  ‘But we wouldn’t mind, Signy, it’s no problem.’

  ‘I said no!’

  ‘Hush,’ Margit said from across the way, calming them down with her soothing smile. ‘Sofie’s only teasing you; of course no one would tell him.’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ Sofie said, covering the lie with a smile.

  ‘If nothing else, it woul
d embarrass him terribly,’ Margit continued. ‘Why, he’s a man now and you’re still a child.’

  ‘Yes. Exactly,’ Signy muttered, hooking her hair behind her ear and staring at the floor. Only, she wasn’t a child now. Her chest ached all the time with her breasts swelling into little buds, and the curse afflicted her every month too. She was just like them, only smaller and thinner.

  ‘Talking of Nils – did I hear him say that Rag is back from his training?’ Sofie asked the group.

  ‘He is. At least for a short while,’ Brit said. ‘He’s completed the infantry training and I think it’s the mountain training next.’

  ‘So then, he’ll be around for the Midsummer’s picnic?’ Kari asked, with a small thrill in her voice. Rag Omenas was the lensmann’s – or sheriff’s – son; and if his father was the most powerful person in the district, he was the most handsome, with a planed jaw and apple cheeks, white-blonde, thick side-swept hair and grey-green eyes. The womenfolk of the village had been bereft when he had left a few months earlier – having turned eighteen – for his national service training. Well, all the women bar Signy – she hadn’t been sad to see him go; her opinion of him had been low ever since she’d glimpsed him kick a stray dog as he walked ahead of her one evening and she abhorred anyone who was cruel to animals; animals were her world. But no one else had seen it and he, as the heir apparent in the village, enjoyed a special sort of exalted status. The men liked his raw athleticism and mannish charisma and all the womenfolk harboured a crush on him. Even Signy could admit he was powerfully attractive. But it was a fact, not a compliment.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ Brit agreed, before looking over at Margit and nudging her with her elbow. ‘Which will be good for you. I bet he’s even more beautiful in a soldier’s uniform.’

  The others laughed delightedly, a swell of excitement rolling over them at the prospect of Rag’s return; the village had been far too quiet and dull since his departure. There was a dance in his eyes that made all the girls’ hearts skip when he looked at them. (All but Signy’s, anyway.)

  ‘Oh, but I’m not . . .’ Margit’s voice trailed off as she looked away bashfully, her cheeks colouring up. As the elder daughter of the village’s richest farmer, a match with Rag was all but expected; they had known each other their whole lives and been in the same class in the village school, but since turning teenagers, as though knowing their fates, they had barely spoken to each other – easy-going Margit suddenly tongue-tied in his presence.

  ‘Well it’s not like he’ll be wearing his uniform to the picnic, Brit,’ Sofie said testily.

  ‘I know that,’ Brit said. ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘And he may not even come anyway. There’s no point in getting excited over nothing. Midsummer’s isn’t for another three weeks,’ Sofie said, dousing their girlish high spirits with a bucketful of cold pragmatism.

  ‘That’s true,’ Margit agreed.

  There was a tight pause suddenly, the crackle and pop of the fire filling the silence.

  ‘Well I hope he does come,’ Kari said defiantly. ‘At the very least it would mean there’s another boy to dance with; last year, I had to dance with Ashi.’

  ‘And what was so bad about that?’ her big sister asked indignantly. ‘I wasn’t so bad.’

  ‘My bruised toes would disagree!’

  They all laughed. Poor Ashi, she really wasn’t the lightest on her feet; perhaps Karl’s fears weren’t entirely misplaced. But Sofie didn’t join in the laughter and as Signy turned her gaze back to her, she saw that she was smiling into the fire again, her expression far away. Signy pulled her blanket tighter over her shoulders, feeling a chill ripple down her hot skin as she understood that Sofie didn’t want to be a farmer’s wife, churning the butter and feeding the pigs; she wanted someone more and she felt her beauty entitled her to it.

  Suddenly, the thought of Sofie taking Nils as her husband wasn’t the most horrifying thing she could imagine. Because if not him . . . Her eyes slid over to her big sister; she was rubbing Kari’s hands with her own to warm her up, unaware that beside her Sofie was staring into the flames as though images were dancing there just for her, and they were showing her exactly what she wanted to see: a beautiful princess and a valiant prince who was coming to claim her hand. At last.

  Chapter Five

  Zac and Lenny disembarked first in a display of bravado and manners, ‘testing’ the hand and footholds for her, even though Anders had assured them with three words and a dour look that they were secure. Bo sensed he was a man of his word. She sat on the rib, looking up as they scrambled like mountain goats up the thirty or so rungs to an incredibly shallow ledge that, from this vantage, didn’t look deep enough to accommodate Zac’s size-ten feet. Nonetheless, it appeared a railing had been secured into the cliff face up there and that by holding on, they could pigeon-step their way a short distance along to where the ledge became deeper.

  ‘All good, babe!’ Zac waved down at her. ‘You’re gonna love it up here!’

  Bo cast Anders a nervous smile. ‘Well, I guess it’s my turn then.’

  Anders, who had tethered the boat to a ring also set into the rock but was still holding on to it to keep the boat extra stable, looked back at her. ‘Can you swim?’

  Oh God. As if that helped! ‘Yes,’ she nodded.

  ‘But you don’t like heights?’

  ‘Mmm, not so much,’ she said, giving an embarrassed smile as she scanned the sheer escarpment again.

  ‘So then why are you staying in a shelf farm?’ he asked, incredulousness the first emotion she had seen him display yet.

  ‘Well, that’s sort of the point,’ she said quietly, biting her lip. ‘Facing our fears.’

  He frowned. ‘You are on a therapy course?’

  ‘No!’ she laughed, feeling some of the tension at least dissipate. ‘We have a blog. We try to be . . . free. Unencumbered by possessions or commitments. Or fears.’

  The way he looked at her left her in no doubt as to his thoughts on that matter. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he said finally, holding out his right hand to help steady her as she stood. ‘I’ll be behind you. If you fall, you fall on me.’

  It was a surprisingly reassuring thought.

  ‘Right then.’ Putting on her best brave face, she raised a hand to the first steel rung. It was so cold it made her bones ache instantly and her hand flew off it, as though it had scalded her instead. With nothing else to hold on to, the boat rocking lightly beneath her, she grabbed Anders’ outstretched arm where he was holding the boat to the rocks. ‘Whoa,’ she said in a shaky voice.

  ‘It is very cold, yes,’ he said calmly behind her, his other arm on her back and stabilizing her. ‘You don’t have gloves?’

  ‘Not on me,’ she murmured, feeling foolish; exactly what good were they sitting at the bottom of a backpack?

  ‘You are sure you want to do this?’ he asked her, watching the fear play patterns over her face.

  Categorically not. ‘Yes. Absolutely.’ And before he could give her a way out, she took a deep breath and tried again. She was jittery with nerves, the familiar old panic zooming around her, awake again, and she winced as the bone-aching temperature shot through her once more, but it had the desired effect of making her move quickly – holding on to the rungs was unbearable, and she realized that was perhaps why the boys had climbed so fast too. She didn’t give herself time to think about the even colder icy water immediately below her; if she lost her grip, there would be nothing to grab or hold to stop an immediate plunge downwards. It would be like the Cresta Run but feet-first. Before she knew it, she was tip-toeing across the ledge and towards Zac’s outstretched arm.

  ‘Well done, babe!’ he said, one arm hooked over the railing as he held out his other arm to hoist her up. He planted a kiss on her lips. ‘You did that so well. Full disclosure – I was worried you might get freaked.’

  ‘No,’ she fibbed. ‘I was fine. Anders was very kind, kept me calm.’

  ‘Thanks,
man,’ Zac said as their driver appeared, as cool as if he was climbing a loft ladder.

  ‘Hold the rope with both hands here,’ Anders said instead. ‘Go forwards.’

  Not daring a glimpse down, keeping her chin firmly – and probably quite comically – pointed up, Bo followed the men off the stony ledge and breathed a visible sigh of relief as they quickly came to grass and the treeline. The grass was still exposed this close to the water – snow and ice only clung to the upper reaches of the mountains – and although incredibly steep, they didn’t need a ropeway or rungs here.

  ‘Uh – so where now?’ Lenny asked, looking around the dense woods and not seeing any visible path.

  ‘This way,’ Anders said, tucking behind them and stepping over the roots of an aspen tree. They followed after, ducking and dodging pinged-back branches. In some places, steps had been cut into the rocky ground, in others, there were steel or rope handrails for where the pitch increased again. Either way, it was relentless. The going was tough, a full-on scramble up the mountain-face, sometimes using roots and boulders as footholds, and branches as hand grips. Within minutes, the three of them were puffing and panting like sledge dogs but Anders walked upright and with almost a bounce in his step, waiting for them patiently but never himself looking worried or tired by the route.

  Occasionally Bo looked up, regretting it each time as she was met with views of overhanging rocks, or grassy slopes that she wouldn’t have dared ski down; she couldn’t understand how the trees could take root here. Even Zac was breathless and she realized they had allowed themselves to lose some of their fitness in Samoa, too tempted by lazy days lying on the white sandy beaches, swimming in lagoons and swinging in the hammock.

  With no one capable of speech, Anders kept looking back every so often to check they were all still together, still okay. But just when she was thinking she was going to have to call for a prolonged stop, they suddenly crested a ridge and the land cut back by a hundred yards or so. Bo wanted to cry with relief as she saw the ramshackle timber huts she and Zac had pored over from their bed in Samoa. There were three that she could see: two principal long, low cabins and a blockier, two-storey old barn or storehouse to the side. Each of the buildings was set upon a stone base, their backs so close to the slopes as to have been cut into the mountain itself, which Bo knew was to protect from avalanches.