Fay dished out pie, and once everyone had a share, Aven settled onto the porch swing beside Thor. Though as wide as Tusie’s whole form, his hand patted a delicate rhythm to her back that made nary a sound, so soft he touched her. Each time he leaned his head back to drop a look to Tusie’s smooth, sleeping face, he kissed the top of her wee head again.
Haakon watched Thor with such focus that Thor rose and strode to his brother in loud steps. Haakon’s eyes widened the closer he came. Gingerly, Thor pulled Tusie away from his chest and lowered her to his brother.
Haakon shook his head, “I’ve never held—”
Thor gave a nod of assurance. Haakon accepted the swaddled infant, cradling her with a trace of apology as though he were far from worthy.
Desperate to bolster him, Aven moved to his side. “Well done, Haakon.” She showed him how to support the baby’s head.
Thor watched on, pride shining in his eyes for his brother and daughter.
With Tusenfryd settled, Aven shifted her hand away from Haakon’s fingers. Without so much as a falter, Haakon cradled her tiny form. “She’s a beauty, she is.”
Aven smiled. “Aye.”
Thor returned to his seat, and Haakon regarded him as though to concede an understanding of how so small a creature could steal a man’s heart.
Haakon shifted his hands, thick wrists flexing with the gentle weight of his niece. “A sun and a shield,” he whispered, almost as though in prayer. “Along the only road worth walking.” He lowered his face beside Tusenfryd’s and brushed his mouth to her round, silken cheek. Her closed eyes scrunched tighter at the brush of his beard, and Haakon smiled. When he pulled away, there was a sheen in his eyes again. “I’d like to give her something. If I may.”
“Of course,” Aven said.
He cradled the baby with his good arm and used his free hand to reach beneath the collar of his shirt and pull up the leather cord that always hung there, drawing up a pouch of the same make. Haakon grimaced but could raise his injured arm no farther. He struggled again, and even as his eyes beseeched her for help, the tips of Aven’s fingers caught hold of the cord, and she helped him lift it off.
“If you’ll open it,” he said.
She glimpsed inside to discover two folds of paper.
Haakon pulled one out and offered it over. Aven unfolded what was a page torn from a Bible. “You are giving this to Tusenfryd?”
“It’s one of my most prized possessions. I don’t want it to get lost while I’m away. If she’ll keep care of it, I’d be thankful.”
If he meant to undo her this eve, he was succeeding. “I promise this will be well cared for.” She held the treasure with utmost regard. “And Haakon?”
“Yes?”
“I wish you the greatest happiness. The both of you.”
Though his nod was sincere, he blinked back what looked like a trace of worry. Did he fear rejection? While Aven knew not the future, she couldn’t imagine this maiden wishing him away. It would be a good and brave man who sought her hand. Yet his uncertainty was clear as he scanned the bottom steps as though to find where he’d dropped an answer.
Aven longed to know this woman who had such an effect on him.
She would be captivating, of that there was no doubt.
“How long will it take you to arrive?” Aven asked.
“At least a few months.”
She watched his thumb brush against Tusie’s tiny ear. “I’ll be praying each and every day.” That the heart he sought would be readied for this sailor’s arrival and that if for any reason the woman was lost to him, God would see Haakon through the unknown.
“I thank you, Aven. For that and much more.”
When Tusie started to fuss, his blue eyes lifted as Aven rose. Giving him one last smile—this one a farewell—she gathered up the baby to nurse her inside. Thor stood and opened the door. Aven thanked him, and he braced the small of her back as she stepped into the house. Leaving the door ajar, he took her place on the steps. With a nod, he bid Jorgan to join them. When the three of them were settled, it was soon just the familiar scent of pipe tobacco, the soft cadence of two voices, and the quiet camaraderie of all three.
In the great room, Aven sank into the rocking chair, her arms full of a slumbering joy and her heart full of thanks for this family. Beginning with the hour she had first met them when the shores of Norway had been but a memory and when the warmth of this land unfolded around her, inviting her in, beckoning her to a new and wondrous way of life aside the sons of this mountain. So many courageous hearts that had forged out families, carved together a living, and built a home where the spirit and heart were at peace.
EPILOGUE
OCTOBER 5, 1895
KRISTIANSAND, NORWAY
HAAKON CLIMBED THE MOUNTAIN PATH ON legs more accustomed to sea than land. A faint snow fell, scarcely worth noting here in Scandinavia. The dusting of autumn flakes speckled his coat, and he buttoned it closed with fingers roughened from life aboard a whaling ship.
After leaving home three and a half months ago, he’d journeyed first to the Rappahannock River with Tess. Wedged into the eastern coast of Virginia, the river had once served as a boundary between the North and South during the Civil War. Al’s wife had encouraged Tess to join an organization there that taught freedmen and women to read. A way for Tess to continue a purpose dear to both hers and Peter’s lives. Not only for civil rights but in honor of all the afternoons that Peter and Tess had sat together, Georgie’s reading primer spread between them.
Haakon had left her standing on the shore of the great, glittering river where she had been farther north than she’d ever been in her life and where he could see in her dark eyes a renewed purpose.
By passenger ship he’d gone farther up the coast to Canada, giving his shoulder the additional weeks to heal. From there, he ventured to Iceland, where he labored with a whaling crew bound for the Faroe Islands, an isolated piece of land once settled by Vikings. There he’d boarded a cod vessel rigged for Norwegian winds that had brought him to this hour. Months of grim labor lay behind, and weeks of procuring cod from Kristiansand’s waters still lay ahead, but this uphill walk was the reason behind every frigid mile and lonely night.
On the hillside before him huddled a small herd of goats. Their numbers were sparser than he recalled. What had been a herd of over two dozen had wilted to a scant few. Just west of the livestock stood the widow’s stone cottage. So narrow it held only one rough-hewn bed and, if his memory served true, the children bunked in any nook and cranny, from padded baskets for the littlest ones to a makeshift loft for those who could climb the ladder. Even nearer than the cottage spread a garden encircled by a low fence of driftwood and weather-beaten rope.
It was there that he saw her, knelt among rows of undersized cabbages and tattered beets.
Her harvest was as sparse as everything else she owned, and he hoped she had already brought most of it in. He feared she hadn’t when he stepped nearer and saw that she was thinner. Draped in a wool cloak of dark evergreen, her slim shoulders bent over a row of carrots as she worked one free. Just outside of the crooked fence sat a wooden cart slight enough to be pulled by a goat. Scattered around were young children, each a mite older than last he’d seen, but few so tall as to reach his waist.
Their mother spoke in Norwegian, directing the nearest boy to dig up a carrot instead of catching snowflakes on his tongue. The lad knelt and tugged a scrawny green top with all his mittened might.
“Nei,” she chided gently and, sliding over, used a spade to show how it was done. Upon finishing, she gave her son the tool, picked up a stick, and began working her own section by scuffing it against the firm earth.
A petite girl moved beside her and crouched down, so close that the woman opened up her cloak and brought the child nearer. In that, Haakon saw a flash of blue beneath from what could only be his shawl.
He strode closer, and soon Kjersti’s eyes lifted to him.
There were any
number of women in Botetourt County he might have courted. Women who were much closer and easier to pursue. But voyage he had, doing the harshest work he’d ever known, to stand here wondering what to say to the young mother with the flaxen hair.
She looked at him as though certain it were a dream. As though any minute she would wake from an imagination bent on tricks.
With gentle movements, he opened the gate and crossed into the garden. A few steps from her he knelt and, to her clear astonishment, took her hand in his. It was cold and thin. Shadows pooled around her eyes where once bloomed naught but her youthfulness. While she had only aged the same months as he, life was trying to whittle her away. Alarm spread through him.
Pulling out coins, he handed them to her oldest son. “Go to the village and buy bread and meat.”
The boy—perhaps eight—didn’t understand. His mother knew some English but she wasn’t speaking. Only staring.
Haakon’s Norwegian was far from ample, but he knew enough for survival in the lake camps. “Brød. Kjøtt.”
“Ja.” The boy wet his lips at sheer mention of provisions.
Haakon nodded for him to hurry. “Rask, ja?”
Clutching the coins, the little fellow ran off down the lane that would lead to the village, perhaps a mile away. More snowflakes fell—lightly dusting the land. While this day was mild yet, forceful storms would blow in with abandon before long, covering the region of Kristiansand with more snow than a person could walk through.
Looking back to the boy’s mother, Haakon noted the steely determination in her eyes. Soil was streaked on her ivory jaw, and her cheeks were reddened and wind chapped. Her hair, a wild tangle of yellow, was pulled back in a tumbling braid as though fashioned with frozen fingers sapped of strength. Her lips, which had once been rosy, now bore a purplish tint that filled him with dread.
“You must stand now,” he said, scarcely able to speak through the tightening of his throat. Haakon moved nearer and touched her wrist with a work-worn hand. “Please.”
She pulled away. “I am going to get these carrots out of the ground.” She spoke low and cool, and while her English was perfect, the Norwegian lilt colored it lovelier.
It bothered him that he noticed something so trivial, but she was stunning to him. It was why he’d been captivated from that first sighting and why he hadn’t been able to shake her since. Lord knows he’d tried.
Grabbing up the spade, she crammed it into the near-frozen earth, desperate, hungry, and fighting against a land that was soon to freeze solid. He could have coaxed the spade from her, but he didn’t mean to oppress, only to help. Haakon reached for a sharp rock and used it to pit the ground one row over. He did this until he had several carrots dug up. After placing them in the cart, he noticed her watching him. She swiped soil from a gnarled root and set it beside the ones he’d added. Wondering if she might allow him closer now, he rose and knelt before her again.
Both of their hands were covered in soil as he took her own in his. Dirt was wedged under her nails in a way that confessed she had done much digging of late. The scraggly potatoes in the bottom of her cart confirmed it. Wanting her to stand, he began to rise, but she wouldn’t be helped up. So uncertain she seemed that he thought of how best to explain his intentions as he knelt again.
“Please hear me. I would like to take you inside and for you to rest.” Rubbing his thumbs on the backs of her hands, he gently chafed his warmth into them. “The children can join you and keep watch of the fire. Then I will come back out here and finish harvesting this garden.” The cart would hardly be full, but he would pick the plot clean as she had meant to. “Will you allow that?”
She made no response. Her mouth parted in a mix of silent doubt and wonder, fjord-blue eyes on his face as if she’d heard a decree that couldn’t be true.
“Please, it’s cold,” he said again.
And her cloak was so thin. With a careful touch, he reached just past her shoulders and lifted the dark hood into place, covering her hair. Shielding her face from the bitter wind that swept up from the sea. To his relief, she allowed him. Haakon brushed his thumb against the homespun cloth of the shawl, then forced his hands to fall away.
She spoke his name hushed-like, pronouncing it as it was spoken in this land of its origin for the kings of old. “Hoh-kun.” The sound of his name in her voice, the fact that it sprang to her memory and perhaps had never been forgotten, was a breaking inside him.
“Kjersti.” In God’s mercy, he’d been gifted it again. He’d been praying it in his heart the three and a half months since. “God dag.” There was probably nothing good about this day for her, but it was one of the few greetings he knew.
She didn’t answer, and rightfully so. To his surprise, she tossed a look out over the fjord below, an inlet of indigo water fed by Norway’s lakes and rivers. “You have come to farm the ice?” Her gaze returned to his face. “It is too early.”
“No. To fish for cod.” He had struck a deal with the captain of a fishing vessel for procuring cod for New York. The hull of the ship was loaded with coarse salt and barrels for brining. In compensation for able seamanship and labor alongside the crew, Haakon had asked only to secure a small cabin for the journey home. He ached to have a reason for his bachelor’s hammock to be dreadfully insufficient on the return trip.
Her eyes went steely. “You should go now.”
“Are you asking me to leave?”
She nodded. “And please do not come back.” She regarded her children, who observed him with wide eyes. “I will not stand for them to be hurt again. They mourned you for weeks and weeks. The only grief to surpass that had been for their father.”
Her confession was a wrenching in his spirit, and deservedly so. “I’m so sorry I brought them sorrow.” He wished he could describe how much.
“Do not offer them any gifts nor tell them any stories. Do not knock on our door, and do not kneel here any longer. You can see the road. Please take it.”
With a glance back, Haakon charted the humble lane that would lead him away from this small farm. Back down to the shoreline where, just beyond, the fishing vessel was docked. The same path he’d taken when he’d first departed this place. When he’d pulled himself from her warm embrace, taking care not to wake her. She had a right to be angry. She had a right to that and more.
Perhaps if he stated himself more clearly. “Kjersti. Please let me take you inside and help you.” Haakon shifted to kneel closer. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay in your barn and tend to the goats and this field and whatever else needs care for as long as it needs it.”
Her eyes betrayed her. Shock wasn’t so easy to conceal when you were aching for hope.
“Then, if you would allow me one last thing, I would like to take you home. To Blackbird Mountain. It’s in America and is good country. I have a cabin there . . .” One that he and his brothers had gotten a good start on just before his leaving and that they had vowed to finish repairing for him. “There’s land and a garden and a pond. Lots of orchards. There’s family too. Sisters and brothers. Even cousins. I would like to take you there, so that you and your children can live with me and so that I can care for you.”
Her mouth fell a little farther open.
“But first, I would ask you to allow me to make you my wife.”
The cold, Norwegian light was beautiful on her skin, and it just got lovelier when she turned to peer at the horizon and the tall ship docked there. Masts and sails jutted up from the deck, all strong and tidy with its rigging and oak beams. She looked back to him as though needing another language to speak with. As though neither English nor Norwegian would suffice. He knew just what that language was. One that said more than spoken words ever could and that he’d spent all his life learning.
He slid his hands beneath her hood, cupping her face with a featherlight touch. His fingers were still soiled, but this was no time to worry, and her face already bore the streaks of this earthen labor. Certain she would
allow him to pull her no closer, he drew himself over the threshold of her fallen spade and slowly, so as not to frighten her, pressed a kiss to her forehead.
Her breath slipped out in a soft rush, and he whispered a single “Please” against her skin.
With that, he pulled away lest he long for more.
“Would you ask me to send my children away?” The determined strength returned to her voice.
“What do you mean?”
“That is what the man from Oslo wanted. He came here and courted me in the summer but was meaning to send them to a far-off school.” She pressed Haakon’s hands away. “He said there were too many of them. Too many of another man’s children to look after. My answer to you will be no as well, because I will not send them away.”
“Too many?” Haakon leaned back to better see her. “Oh no, madam. I scarcely think there are enough.”
That pinch of surprise betrayed her again.
He’d asked himself over and over during the journey here—why couldn’t he shake her from his soul? Because he knew what it was like to be left behind. The passing of his mother had quaked his world, and he’d grown up on uneven ground because of it. The same would be for this woman and her children after their own wretched loss. Something in him longed to soothe that brokenness just as he’d once needed. It wasn’t charity, nor was it a wiping away of memory, but instead a deep-rooted thirst that had him yearning to care for her more and more with each passing day. To protect her and love her as he had been longing to do for a woman for as long as he could recall. He hoped—with all his heart—to have her love in return.
After inching himself farther back, he pretended the need to count the children. First the nearest boy, who stood in quiet observation, scarcely taller than the low garden fence. Then the oldest girl, perhaps three, still squirreled away beneath her mother’s cloak. Third was a stout boy of about seven who had a dirty face and a wondering expression as he sat on the tongue of the cart. Fourth was the strapping bit of courage who had gone off to the village.
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