by Anna Ciddor
‘That’ll have to do,’ he thought. ‘I’m not climbing any higher!’
Going down was faster than going up. It was more of a slither than a climb! Oddo was relieved when his feet hit solid ground again. Hairydog jumped up on him and almost pushed him over as she tried to lick his face.
Oddo turned to Thora. She was staring at him with big round eyes.
‘What were those birds doing?’ she asked.
Oddo shrugged.
‘Just making sure I didn’t fall,’ he said, trying to sound casual. Then his mouth split in a big grin.‘Well, what do you think of that!’ he burst out proudly.
Thora crossed her arms and tried to look stern.
‘You’re very lucky,’ she said.‘You gave me a big fright when you started to fall.’ Then she bent down to pick up her basket. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s take these to show your mother.’
On the way home, Thora watched out for the special plants Granny needed for her potions. She picked a few leaves and flowers, but then she had a better idea.
‘Hang on!’ She knelt on the ground beside a new, young plant. ‘Can I borrow your dagger?’
Oddo carried a small dagger in his belt. Deftly, Thora used its point to dig around the plant and scoop it out of the ground. She laid it gently in the basket, on top of the eggs.
‘I’m going to plant this,’ she announced. ‘I’m taking the day off tomorrow and I’m going to make my garden.’
16
The secret garden
Early next morning Thora hurried towards the wood, her precious bag of seeds and her little seedling clasped in her arms. But a few minutes later her feeling of excitement had drained away. She couldn’t find a single place to plant her seeds. Her brothers and sisters roamed the wood every day searching for herbs, sticks and stones for their spellwork. Everywhere she went, she knew they visited. There was nowhere they didn’t go. Nowhere! Thora threw her precious bundle on the ground and flopped down after it, miserable with disappointment.
She sat so still that a hare popping out of a bramble bush didn’t notice her. Then Thora turned her head and the hare took fright, bobbing back out of sight. Thora wished she too were small enough to crawl beneath a bramble bush.
‘If I could do a shape-change like Oddo, I could find a hidden place to make a garden,’ thought Thora.
She stood up and wandered towards the bramble patch. She’d never noticed before what a large area it covered.
‘It’s bigger than our house!’ thought Thora.
She plucked a half-ripe berry, but its sour taste made her mouth pucker.
‘If I could clear a space in the middle of these brambles, I could make a secret garden,’ thought Thora. ‘Nobody goes past those prickly branches. But how could I get past them myself?’
Suddenly she thought of the hare, burrowing underneath. Was that the answer? She bent down and searched eagerly for the place where the hare had disappeared. At last she found it, a gap between the branches and a smoothed patch on the ground. Of course, it was much too small for her, but maybe she could make it bigger.
‘If I had some tools . . .’
Thora remembered Oddo’s little dagger and the axe he used to cut down trees. The next moment she was racing through the wood towards the farm. Sigrid was just crossing the yard. She looked at Thora in surprise.
‘I thought you weren’t coming today,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you working on your garden?’
‘Yes,’ said Thora. ‘But I need some tools. Would I be able to borrow some from you?’
A few minutes later Thora was scraping away with Oddo’s wooden spade, trying to make a bigger tunnel under the bramble patch. Every now and then she glanced over her shoulder to check if anyone was coming. While she dug, she planned how she would hide the entrance when she finished.
‘I’ll make a trapdoor from a fallen log,’ she decided.
Thora wasn’t used to digging, but she was too busy and excited to take any notice of her blistered hands and aching muscles. In a short time, the tunnel was ready. She squirmed down it and stood up for the first time in her secret garden. To her delight, the brambles were not as thick as they appeared. They actually grew in a circle round a hidden clearing! She gave herself a moment to gloat, before making her way out again to collect the seeds and tools. Then she set to work.
Sigrid had shown her what to do. She lifted the spade and plunged it into the ground, right up to the haft. Then, using all her strength, she levered up a clod of earth and turned it over. A surprised pink worm suddenly found itself burrowing in mid-air. It twisted round and thrust back into the ground. Thora laughed.
‘I’m digging that bit next!’ she warned.
Clod by clod, she made her way around the clearing. The sun beat on her neck and the sweat trickled down her face, but she didn’t stop till her whole garden was dug. Then she leaned on her spade and beamed at it with satisfaction.
All that day Thora worked on her garden. She raked the newly-turned soil and then began to plant her seeds. The most difficult part was getting water to the plants. She fetched some from the river, carrying it in a bag made from a goat bladder. It took a lot of trips to fetch enough!
By the evening, Thora was so tired she could hardly drag herself home. She realised as she reached home that she was covered in dirt from head to foot. But no one said anything when she walked in the door. They assumed she’d spent her day at the farm, and they weren’t interested in farmwork.
‘They don’t care how I spend my time,’ thought Thora.‘They think I’m useless ’cause I can’t do spells.’
She climbed into bed feeling lonely and unwanted, and tried to cheer herself up picturing the garden she was going to make.
‘I’m not useless,’ she told herself. ‘I’m going to learn how to grow vegetables and herbs and I’m going to help Granny make all sorts of wonderful cures.’
17
The Cormorant
With no one to do the housekeeping, the house-over-the-hill grew messier and dirtier every day. In a short time everything was coated in a thick layer of grease and grime. The door hangings fell down and nobody bothered replacing them. Every cooking utensil developed a layer of burnt-on gunk. The only way Thora could be sure of one clean cooking pot for breakfast and dinner was to hide a cauldron in the wood while she was out of the house.
Some evenings when Thora arrived home she would find Finnhilda poking at a black, evil-smelling concoction in one of the dirty cauldrons and her mother would look up with a smile to say ‘I’ve made dinner tonight!’ When this happened, Thora would pretend to be too tired to eat and go to bed hungry. She didn’t want to risk eating any of the poisonous mushrooms or other inedible ingredients her mother threw into the pot. Before the meal, the rest of the family could chant a spell to protect them against poison and sickness. If they were too young, Granny would lay her hand on their heads and say the protective spell for them. But Thora vividly remembered her sixth birthday, the first time she’d been told to say the protective spell for herself, and the agony of stomach aches she’d suffered afterwards. That had been the night she’d first suspected that she didn’t have the same magic powers as the rest of her family.
From that night on, Thora had taken over cooking her family’s meals.
No one had taught her how to cook, so she’d just had to learn by trial and error. She supposed it was lucky that her family never seemed to notice what they were eating. They didn’t comment on the worms in their mushrooms, the prickles in their nettle salad or the sand that gritted between their teeth when they ate badly washed seaweed.
Over the years, her efforts had improved. Nowadays nobody bothered to say a protective spell before they ate something she’d prepared. Until she had a meal at Oddo’s house, she’d thought she was doing quite well. But Sigrid had taught her the way food should really taste. Sigrid knew the right herbs to drop into a stew so that you could feel contented just breathing in the smell of it without even taking a bite.
Every day when she went to the farm, Thora watched Sigrid cook, and Sigrid, pleased with her interest, began to show her what to do. One day she let Thora make a meal all by herself, and praised the girl for her efforts.
‘You’re a quick learner!’ she said. ‘And it’s lovely for me to have a break from cooking. I’m so lucky to have your help!’
Thora glowed with happiness.
Every morning now, Thora woke up looking forward to the day. Before she went to the farm she would fetch a bag of water and take it to her garden. She examined the soil eagerly, and squealed with delight the day she found her first green shoots. She began to carry a sharp stone, like a dagger, so that when she found a useful seedling growing in the wood she could dig it up and take it to her garden. The sun shone and the earth, as she patted it, felt warm and alive.
One day when Thora reached the farm she found Sigrid pouring seawater into a wide flat pan made of soapstone. Sigrid laid it to heat over a low fire.
‘What’s that for?’ asked Thora.
‘Watch and see,’ Sigrid answered.
To Thora’s surprise, the water in the pan gradually disappeared, leaving behind a sparkling layer of dry salt.
‘Now, if Oddo catches some fish we can make salted fish,’ said Sigrid.
Thora was pleased that Sigrid was beginning to have more faith in the things her son could do. He and Thora had presented Sigrid with several baskets of eggs and feathers they’d collected from the cliffs (they hadn’t told her it was Thora who’d done most of the climbing). Oddo had finished shearing the sheep and now they were grazing happily up in the mountain pastures.
‘He’s a good boy,’ said Sigrid.‘But I don’t know what he thinks I’m going to do with all those feathers and eggs.’
‘I thought they were for trading at the market!’ Thora exclaimed.
‘That’s what Oddo thinks,’ said Sigrid, shaking her head.‘But Bolverk’s still stuck in bed – he won’t be taking them – and when I asked the other farmers they said they’re not going to market this year. They’ve laid their hands on a longship and they’re going on a Viking raid instead. So you see, we’ve got no way of sending anything to market.’ She sighed heavily. ‘I haven’t had the heart to tell Oddo yet. He’s trying so hard.’
Thora was silent. She knew, even better than Sigrid, how devastated Oddo would be if all his efforts were in vain.
When Oddo came indoors, Thora showed him the salt.
‘Can we go fishing this afternoon?’ she asked.
‘We’ll have to get The Cormorant ready first,’ said Oddo.
The little rowboat lay unused on the riverbank during the long winter months. It was covered with a heap of branches and animal skins. Oddo began to pull off the coverings and Thora helped him eagerly. She’d never been on a boat before. Hairydog tried to join in.
Oddo knelt beside the boat. Thora watched him slide his fingers along the curved wood and feel under the overlapping planks.
‘Poop,’ he said. ‘I can feel a couple of cracks.’ He squatted back on his heels, his face screwed up with disappointment.
‘Can’t you fill them?’ asked Thora.
‘We’ve got plenty of wool to stuff in the holes,’ said Oddo, ‘but I need tar to make it sticky and waterproof. Father always makes the tar by burning pine wood in a special pit. I don’t know how to do it.’
‘Something sticky!’ exclaimed Thora. She thought of the floor at home, completely covered with sticky goo from boiled-over spells and leaking wands. The alder branches that were used for wands often bled a sticky sap. Thora had an idea. Eagerly, she checked the trees growing all around them. Yes, here was an alder tree, the telltale red globules glinting on its trunk.
‘Come here,’ she called.
Oddo joined her.
‘If we cut this tree, we’ll get some sticky sap,’ she explained. ‘Couldn’t we use that instead of tar?’
Oddo unhooked the little dagger from his belt and reached up to slash at the alder.
‘Hang on!’ Thora cried, grabbing his arm. Oddo stared at her in surprise.
‘You just told me to cut it!’ he said.
‘Yes, but you have to ask the tree first,’ said Thora. ‘If you make the tree bleed without permission, it’ll bring you bad luck!’
Oddo gave the alder a startled look.
‘That can’t be right, he said. ‘Farmers cut down trees every day.’ But then a thoughtful expression came over his face. ‘Is this another thing that only happens to magic people?’ he asked. ‘Like digging in the ground annoying the Little Folk? Maybe that’s why I have so much bad luck!’
Thora shrugged.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
Oddo turned back to the tree.
‘Well, what should I say?’ he asked.
Thora knelt down and placed her hands gently against the trunk. She looked up at Oddo. He was just standing there watching her.
‘Come on,’ she hissed. ‘Do what I’m doing.’
Looking self-conscious, Oddo knelt down beside her.
‘Lady Alder Tree,’ said Thora, ‘forgive us for the pain we are about to cause you. Please may we have some of your sap?’
Solemnly, Oddo repeated her words. But he looked nervous as he stood up and placed the blade of his knife against the trunk of the tree.
‘Now I feel like a murderer,’ he groaned.
‘Go on.’
He pressed his weight on the blade and it bit into the bark. Then he stepped back. They both looked at the gash he’d made.
‘Nothing’s happening,’ he said.
‘Wait.’
Sure enough, a few beads of red-gold sap began to well out of the gash. Oddo rushed back to the house to fetch some strands of wool. He rolled them in the sap. Then, using the point of his dagger, he pushed them into the cracks between the boat planks.
‘It looks pretty good,’ said Oddo. ‘But we’ll have to get it in the water to see if there are any leaks.’
As soon as the sap had hardened, they dragged The Cormorant to the river’s edge. She slid in with a satisfying splash.
‘Okay, everybody in!’ called Oddo. He held the boat steady while Thora boarded cautiously. Hairydog followed her, barking excitedly. Last of all, Oddo climbed aboard and used an oar to shove away from the shore.
‘I’ll teach you how to row,’ he said.
Thora was a quick learner, but it was difficult to time their strokes so that the oars went in and out of the water together.
‘Faster!’ yelled Oddo.
‘Slower!’ yelled Thora.
Their oars dipped and splashed and the boat began to swing around in circles. The two friends began laughing hysterically. Hairydog backed as far as she could into the stern of the boat and stared at them, astonished.
‘Stop!’ cried Oddo at last.
They rested their arms and sat still, trying to calm down and catch their breath. The Cormorant drifted gently downriver. In a short while, they reached the point where the river flowed into the fjord. Oddo picked up the fishing net and cast it into the water.
After a while Thora noticed a pool of water in the bottom of the boat. She stamped down hard, splashing them both again and burst into another fit of giggling. To her surprise, Oddo didn’t join in. He began to feel anxiously along the planks.
‘I reckon she’s leaking,’ he said. ‘Looks as if I’ve got some more mending to do. We’d better head home before we sink.’
He heaved the net out of the water and onto the floor of the boat. Inside was a wriggling mound of silver herrings. Hairydog gave a few startled yelps.
‘This is terrific!’ crowed Oddo. ‘You’ll have to make lots more salt, Thora. I’m going to catch every fish in this river. Just watch me! We’ll be able to buy anything we want at the market!’
Thora didn’t know what to say.
With the boat beached, Oddo hoisted the full net onto his back and carried it up to the house. He lugged it inside, tipped the herrings on
to the floor, and stood beside them grinning proudly, his clothes dripping and stinking of fish.
‘You’re making a tarn of my floor!’ Sigrid cried, but she didn’t really sound very cross.
‘I would have got more, but I had to bring the boat back. She was leaking,’ said Oddo. ‘I’ll mend her and we’ll go out again tomorrow.’
Sigrid eyed the fish already scattered on the floor. ‘We won’t need many more loads,’ she said.
Oddo gaped at her. ‘We need lots more!’ he cried. ‘Father always takes piles of salted fish to market.’
Thora saw Sigrid take a deep breath and put an arm round her son’s shoulders.
‘Oddo,’ she said gently, ‘you’ve been a wonderful help. You’ve done much more than I ever dreamed you could. Your father will be very proud of you when he wakes up. But it’s no use getting things ready for market, because we’ve got no way of taking them there. Ulf and the other farmers aren’t travelling to the market this year. They’ve laid their hands on a longship and they’re going on a Viking raid instead.’
Thora saw the look of dismay and disbelief spread across Oddo’s face. She knew he was remembering all their hard work of the last few weeks. Her heart ached.
‘Then we’ll just have to take our own boat!’ said Oddo stoutly.
‘How?’ asked Sigrid. ‘Your father won’t be well in time, and I have to stay here and look after him. Who would row it?’
‘I will!’ said Oddo. ‘I know the way. I’ve gone with you and Father every year.’
‘Oh Oddo, be sensible. It takes two adults to row The Cormorant,’ said Sigrid, beginning to sound impatient.
‘Thora and I managed it today,’ said Oddo.
Thora thought of their unbalanced oar strokes and the way the boat kept swinging round in circles.
‘But Oddo, the market’s not just down the river,’ cried Sigrid. ‘It’s far away. You have to travel out into the fjord and then right round the coast!’
Oddo stuck out his jaw and looked stubborn.
‘I know I can do it,’ he said.
Thora sensed his pain and anger and drew closer to him.