An Untamed Heart

by Lauraine Snelling

  “Who usually does the straightening?”

  Kari giggled. “The girls. The boys mow and the girls go behind and straighten.”

  Nils raised an eyebrow. They were teasing him. The thought made him feel like he was a real member of the family, no longer a guest to be taken care of. “Perhaps Gunlaug will teach me to weave on the loom.”

  “Men weave too, so ja, I will teach you.”

  “And they spin?”

  “Not usually as much. Unless they are wounded and cannot work at men’s work.”

  “You think I am so wounded I cannot do a man’s work?”

  “No, no . . . uh . . . um . . .” Gunlaug stared at Ingeborg, as if imploring her assistance. Was that red creeping up into her face?

  Nils tried to keep a stern look on his face, but when Hamme snickered into her hands, no matter how tight he held his jaw, he could not keep from choking on the laughter bursting out. As soon as he laughed, they all snickered, then true laughter broke out and rocked them all.

  Ingeborg dipped her fingers in the vile-smelling salve and slapped some on his palm. “Uff da, such carrying on,” which only made them all laugh more.

  Nils watched her and recognized the laughter dancing in her eyes until she gave in and laughed out loud too.

  “I am sorry Mari and Jon missed out on this,” Ingeborg said when they quieted. “She needs a good laugh.”

  “We can tell her what happened, and she can laugh then,” Hamme said with a grin at Nils. “But we will not let you tell her, because you will not tell her the whole truth.”

  Nils tucked his chin and looked at her from under his eyelashes. He pointed a finger to his chest and shrugged.

  Ingeborg tied the knot on the back of his hand. “We all need to get back to work. Any other blisters that I need to look at? Tor, how are your hands?”

  “Tougher than shoe leather.” He held them out. “I put an extra layer of leather in the palm of my gloves. See?” He turned them partway out. Nils knew this was the first pair that he had finished.

  “When will mine be done?” Nils asked.

  “I didn’t put an extra layer in yours, but soon. I keep falling asleep in the evening when I would be stitching them.”

  Nils nodded. He was well aware of that, since he had sent the boy up to bed more than once. “I will be pleased whenever you get them done.”

  Kari followed the boys out to the hayfield, pitchfork in hand to smooth out the rough spots. Hamme washed the dishes, and Ingeborg carried the spinning wheel outside.

  “That is not fair,” Gunlaug complained. “I cannot take the loom outside.”

  “I will trade you jobs.” When she returned with her basket of wool for spinning, she also brought out part of a fleece and the carding paddles and handed them to Nils. “Here, you should be able to do this—if you want, that is. Hamme will be out to help card in a bit.”

  He nodded, keeping a sober face, since that was what she was wearing. But if his eyes danced as much as hers, he knew they were in for more laughter.

  “Do not laugh now,” he ordered, as he laid some of the wool on the metal teeth.

  She tried not to laugh, but when he gave her a stern look, she giggled like a little girl, then laughed along with him.

  “You need to laugh more.”

  “We all need to laugh more.”

  “Very true.” He smiled at her and held up the paddles. “Am I doing this right?”

  “You will get better with practice.” She looked out across the field to where the others were hard at work. With a bit of a nod, she picked up her straight-lying strands of wool, pulled out a small piece, and drew it through her fingers, feeding it through the flyer hooks onto the bobbin. She made it look so easy, and the yarn winding onto the bobbin was absolutely even—no lumps, no thin spots. Nils would not attempt spinning this year. He would never, in the time remaining, master that skill.

  With the wheel humming, she looked back at Nils. “You are doing better.”

  “Takk.”

  “Eventually the slap and pull of the cards will be easy, and you can forget what you are doing and take part in the conversations or even enjoy a joke or two. You almost look angry at what you are doing.”

  “I am not surprised. This should be easy and it is not.”

  “That is like life, is it not? What looks to be easy can sometimes be most difficult.”

  “When we were little my tutor often said, ‘Life is what you make it. You choose hard or easy.’ I have a hard time believing that. I did not choose to step in front of the carriage or fall down to the creek. Some things just happen.”

  “The Bible says all things come from God’s hand.”

  “I have a hard time believing that too. It must be something men say as an excuse or confusion as to the actual meaning.”

  “Have you read the book of Job?”

  “Part of it.” He did not mention how few parts of the Bible he had read at all. He had heard more of it than read it himself.

  “When you get home, you might read that. Your family has a Bible, right?”

  “Ja, that is where all the family history is usually kept. But in our Bible, the family records are remarkably short.”

  All the while they talked, she kept the spinning wheel humming, and the spindle of yarn grew in size. How she did that, he would never understand. Thoughts of his mother spinning did not fit. She stitched fine pieces, but as far as he knew, neither knitted nor even mended. They had a woman come in to do the mending, and all the women’s clothes were made by a seamstress and the men’s by a tailor. Had Far’s mor done these things? He had no family stories to laugh over and repeat to enjoy like these cousins did. He’d listened to their stories in the evenings, and they all shared one another’s lives in a way not only unknown to him but almost of a different world.

  He slapped the carding paddles, but only once. The pull and stroke were coming more easily now. Unless he started watching Ingeborg. Then all carding went out of his mind. The smooth actions of her hands, the rhythm of her foot on the pedal that kept the wheel spinning, the dreamy look on her face. What was she thinking?

  Did he dare to ask? Nei, but to hope?

  22

  Two weeks later, Ingeborg gazed out over the hayfield to the stacks of hay dotting the brown of the mown grass stalks. What a job that had been, added on to all the other chores that continued every day. Thanks to Hjelmer’s trapline and Tor’s fishing skill, they often had meat to go with the porridge, for they had run out of vegetables other than what they could harvest from the wild.

  Tor also had hare hides nailed to the walls to dry. He planned to finish tanning them and make mittens in the winter. The pair he had finished as a pattern would go home with Nils, along with the gloves that Nils swore were the finest he had ever had.

  With him would also go her heart. Not that he knew that, but one day while she and Gunlaug were talking, she realized that yes, what she felt was indeed love. Love that needed to be kept secret, for she understood that the son of a successful city man and a girl raised on a farm near a small village were not meant to be together. Nils would become a wealthy businessman, even if that went against all he desired. And she? She would become the best midwife possible and go on with her life, because no other man would ever compare to this one.

  Soon they would start preparing to head back down the mountains to home. The thought of leaving made her stomach clench. As the days grew shorter, so did her spirits. Back to the strictures of society and to Mor, who would criticize everything she did.

  So what is it you want to do? she asked herself.

  I want to become the best midwife possible and help babies come into this world and help mothers get strong again afterward. I want to help make people well; I want to learn all about herbs and natural remedies for both animals and people. I want to do what God wants me to do. Lord, I feel so much closer to you up here. Do you live only in the mountains and not in the valleys?

  “Are you all rig
ht?” Gunlaug stopped beside her.

  “I’m thinking about going home. I need to go count the cheeses. It may take two wagons to haul it all. We have done well.”

  “We also have fourteen new pigs, four new calves, and enough wool to keep your spinning wheel running twenty-four hours a day, if you want.”

  “With fleeces left over to sell. I believe Onkel Frode will be glad his investment paid off so well.”

  “Are you never curious as to what has gone on at home?”

  “At times, but I so dread returning. Every year it gets harder.”

  “This one will be even worse.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You will be saying good-bye to Nils.”

  “I know. I cannot allow myself to think about that.”

  “Will we wait until they arrive or should we send someone down?” Gunlaug asked.

  “Wait. We will get everything ready so that when they come we can load, close up the house, and be gone the next morning.”

  “All the fleeces are already rolled. We have been using up the kitchen supplies, so the baby pigs will have a wagon to ride in. We have more chickens too, so I don’t know if they will all fit in the crate.”

  “Many things to think about. I am going to go spin until it is time to fix supper.”

  That night after the others had all gone to bed, Ingeborg and Nils sat in front of the fire, she at her wheel and he on the floor with arms crossed over his bent knees and his chin resting on them. The yellows and reds of the flames danced merrily across the side of his head.

  Ingeborg stood up to add more wood to the fire. Sitting close to him was growing more difficult as the days left at the seter grew shorter. “Would you like some coffee?” Anything to get to move around.

  “Takk.” When he smiled up at her, her heart paused and then started dancing even more wildly than the flames. If only they could remain here and not return to that other life.

  She brought a cup and poured the dark brew into it. When she handed it to him, his fingers brushed hers, and she nearly dropped the cup. If this was what love felt like, she was not sure she ever wanted to feel like this again. Or could feel like this again.

  She had met the love of her life, and her love for him was not to be. She returned to the spinning wheel and picked up the wool where she had left off. At least she understood all there was to understand about spinning. The bad thing about spinning was that she could do it with her eyes closed, and that left her mind free to wander. Perhaps this year, when the snow was deep and the skiing was easy, she would come up here with the men when they came to load the hay onto the sleighs and take it down to feed the cattle. And she would remember the summer that she met Nils and she would smile, but the pain of leaving would have dimmed by then, so she would not weep but be grateful for the time she loved a fine young man.

  She stood suddenly and stretched, unable to settle.

  “Can you not sit for a while longer?” Nils asked.

  “If you want. I . . . I guess I am just restless this night.”

  “Did you hear the owl call?”

  “Nei, I just heard the spinning song.”

  “When I came here, I would not have recognized an owl call.”

  “I’m sure you don’t hear owls calling in the city.”

  “I might have heard them when I was hiking and camping but did not know what I heard. Now I know about cows and sheep and what they eat and how the babies are born and how to herd them and keep them safe and how to cut and stack hay. And I have found a woman who has a mind and is not afraid to speak it and who can laugh and repair broken legs and blisters and teach children how to do the things she knows so well. And with a heart big enough to welcome a very spoiled young man and take care of him and help him walk again. A woman who knows how to read and can discuss what she reads and learns new things and weeps when talking with her God and teaches others what love is by the way she acts.”

  Ingeborg closed her eyes and tipped her head back. The silence was broken only by the crackling of the fire and a sleepy woof from one of the sheep dogs sleeping in a covered spot next to the doorway.

  Surely he couldn’t mean all that. No one had ever said such things to her. No one had ever touched her heart like this.

  He patted the floor beside him. “Can you return to sit here?”

  She wanted to say No, I need to leave now. But instead she did as he asked and sank down beside him yet not close. The urge to reach out and touch his hand raged inside her like an angry wolverine, the fiercest of the predators.

  “Do you understand what I am saying?”

  She stared into the fire, picked up the poker, and stabbed it into the coals. She nodded, her heart closing her throat.

  “Ingeborg, look at me, please.”

  She breathed a sigh and turned her bent legs the other way so she could see him better. His eyes were dark, his face changing shape with the flickering firelight. Gold glinted in the lock of hair that always fell over his forehead, the lock she so often wanted to smooth back, now grown long and tied back with a sheepskin thong.

  Run! Her inner voice screamed a warning. Do not listen to him!

  But if that was good advice, when did she ever listen to good advice? She opened her eyes again and met his gaze. The shock of it sent tremors clear to the soles of her feet.

  “I love you, Ingeborg Strand, and I can only hope you love me in return.”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter how much I love you. This love cannot be.”

  “You do love me!” He reached for her hand and laced her fingers through his. The warmth of it, the joy of it, choked her up even more. He loves me. Nils loves me. How can I stand the joy of it?

  “Come, let us go outside and look at the stars.” He rose in one graceful movement that showed how strong he had become and pulled her up with both hands. Together, hands locked between them, they opened the door softly so as to not wake anyone and walked a few paces away from the house. One of the dogs stirred, but she told him to go back to sleep, and he settled in again. They stopped and stared up at the arched bowl of the cobalt sky, pinned into the heavens by the pricks of light.

  “I will look up and see those same stars when I return to Oslo and school. I will know that you are looking too, and if the stars can shine on both of us, there is hope. We will find a way, in spite of what our families are going to say. I know mine will say plenty, but you, my Ingeborg, are worth braving any storm that I might be with you. Society is no longer important to me. We will find a way.”

  To be together. She wanted to shake her head. She wanted to dance with joy. She wanted . . . she wanted his words to be true. With her whole heart, she wanted his words to be true. But where or how? Her practical side fought to take over, but this time she refused to allow it even a voice. Let his words be true. That she was not loving in vain.

  “You do love me?”

  “Ja, I do.”

  “And you will wait for me? I must finish my commitment to my far to do a good job and no longer act the dilettante. And then I will come for you.” Hands locked between them, he turned to face her. “May I kiss you?”

  She meant to say ja but the word wouldn’t form. Instead, she nodded. When he lowered his head, she raised her chin, letting his lips settle over hers. Warm. Tantalizing. No one had ever told her kissing could be like this, that a simple kiss could send shock waves clear to her fingers and toes and make her heart skip and dance.

  When he raised his head, her lips begged for more. But she needed to catch her breath. Could kissing make one feel dizzy? Even the stars were dancing in their assigned places in the heavens. She grabbed on to his shirt front with both hands and felt his heart hammering against his chest. Ah, so it did that to him too? She leaned her forehead against the solid wall of his chest. Had her sister kissed her beloved and felt the same way? Why did she not warn Ingeborg what could happen? Or was she the only one to ever feel just this way?

  He placed both hands agains
t the sides of her face and tipped her head back so she had to look at him. “That is what love feels like. Stars bursting and the earth blooming. Fires raging, and your voice calms them all. You are my world, Ingeborg, and I want no other.”

  This time when he kissed her, her lips took on a life of their own, and she kissed him back. Perhaps wanton behavior, but it seemed the natural thing to do. When she needed to breathe again, she drew back.

  “I need to go to bed now. Morning will come too early.”

  “I know.” He heaved a sigh. “I feel our time is running out faster and faster. Ingeborg, I don’t want to go home.”

  “Neither do I, but there is no choice. Once winter comes here, the only way in or out is on skis. And the seter house is not built to withstand winter. Besides, you made an agreement with your far. And you have to live up to it.”

  “I know.” He kept hold of her hands. “But too soon everyone will be telling us that we cannot love each other, that our lives have to go a different way. I will write to you.”

  She nodded. “And I will answer.”

  The next morning the weather had turned cold, and they shivered on their way out to do the chores. Back in the house, Mari had the fireplace hot and was cooking the ubiquitous porridge, but she also made biscuits with cinnamon and sugar on top.

  Ingeborg paused a moment to watch the porridge bubbling so sluggishly. “Tomorrow we can have eggs, and maybe Hjelmer will bring us some meat when he checks his trapline. We need to go look for dandelion leaves again. It takes a lot to feed all of us.”

  Mari smiled. “That is one way to know when our life at the seter is nearly over. We run out of vegetables. It is a good thing we always have cheese, and thanks to our chickens, eggs—and thanks to the cows, plenty of milk.”

  “Ja, being grateful for what we have is the most important thing we do.” Ingeborg cupped her hands around her coffee cup. She felt sure the men would be coming to get them either today or tomorrow. How the weather could change so quickly she didn’t really understand, but when fall arrived, that was the way of it.