West of the Moon

by Katherine Langrish

  “I’m sure you will,” said her mother grimly.

  “What’s this?” Peer picked up a tightly rolled sausage of woollen fabric.

  “That’s a sleeping sack,” said Gudrun. “Big enough for two. It’s for you, Peer – we’ve only the one, and Astrid says she’ll share hers with Hilde. Ralf used it last, when he went a-Viking.”

  “Thank you, Gudrun,” Peer said with gratitude. He hadn’t thought about sleeping arrangements. What else had he missed?

  “My tools – I’ll need them.” He dashed back into the empty house and looked around, caught by the strangeness of it all. Would he ever come back?

  “Nis,” he called quietly, and then, using the little creature’s secret name, “Nithing? Are you there?” Nothing rustled or scampered. No inquisitive nose came poking out over the roofbeams.

  “Nis?”

  Perhaps it was curled up somewhere, fast asleep after the shocks and excitement of last night. “I’m going,” he called, raising his voice. “Goodbye, Nis… I’m going away. Look after the family.” Again he waited, but only silence followed. “Till we meet again,” he ended forlornly.

  He picked up his heavy wooden toolbox, and went out, closing the door. The pony lowered its head and snorted indignantly as this last load was strapped on.

  “On guard!” said Gudrun to grey-muzzled old Alf, who settled down in front of the doorstep, ears pricked. Hilde carried Elli. Astrid was wrapped in her blue cloak again, shoulder braced against the weight of her bulging goatskin bag. Peer held out his hand. “Give that to me, Astrid. I’ll carry it for you.”

  “No!” Astrid clutched the strap. “I’ll carry it myself. It’s quite light.”

  It looked heavy to Peer, but he didn’t care enough to insist. “Everyone ready? Off we go.”

  Through the wood and downhill to the old wooden bridge: each twist of the path so familiar, Peer could have walked it with his eyes shut. Past the ruined mill, where a whiff of charcoal still hung in the damp air, and back into the trees. On down the long slope, till they came to the handful of shaggy little houses that made up Trollsvik. They swished through the prickly grass of the sand dunes and on to the crunching shingle.

  The fjord was blue-grey: beyond the shelter of the little harbour, it was rough with white caps. Short, stiff waves followed one another in to land. And there was the ship, Water Snake, bare mast towering over the little jetty, forestay and backstay making a great inverted V. It was a shock to see her, somehow – so real, so —

  “So big!” Gudrun gasped.

  Astrid stopped, her cloak flapping in the wind. Her face was sombre, and she braced her shoulders. “Here we go again!”

  Most of the village was there on the shore, trying to sell things to Gunnar, and getting in the way of cursing sailors manhandling barrels of fresh water and provisions.

  There was Harald, his long hair clubbed back in a ponytail, heaving crates around with the crew. Peer’s eyebrows rose in grudging respect: he’d thought Harald too much the ‘young lord’ to bother with real work. He noticed with relief that neither Harald nor Gunnar were wearing swords this morning. That would even things out a bit. Of course, those long steel swords would rust so easily: they’d be packed away in greased wool for the voyage.

  Ralf and Arne came to unload the pony. Ralf seized Hilde. “Are you sure about this?” And before Peer could hear her reply, somebody grabbed him, too.

  It was Bjørn, a tight frown on his face. “Have you gone crazy?” he demanded. “How can you think of sailing with Harald?”

  Peer’s gaze slid past Bjørn’s shoulder. “I’ll be all right, Pa,” Hilde was saying in an earnest voice. “I really, truly want to go.”

  “Ah,” Bjørn said. “This is Hilde’s idea, is it? I might have known.”

  “Not entirely,” said Peer, blushing.

  “I thought we were going to work together. I thought you wanted to build boats, like your father.”

  “I do.” Peer touched the silver ring he always wore, which had belonged to his father. He added earnestly, “I do want to work with you, Bjørn. When I come back —”

  “When you come back!” Bjørn exploded. “If you come back! Peer, this is no fishing trip. Whatever they say, Gunnar and his men are Vikings, and that ship is like a spark from a bonfire that goes floating off, setting trouble alight wherever it lands.” He added, “I’m not usually so poetical. But you see what I mean?”

  “Yes,” said Peer. “But your brother’s going, isn’t he? This is a trading voyage, not a Viking raid. Gunnar has his wife with him. He’s not going to fight anyone, he’s going to Vinland to cut down trees for timber. Besides —”

  He broke off. Who am I trying to convince? Yet he still felt the unexpected longing that had squeezed his heart yesterday evening, as he looked westwards from the stern of Water Snake. “Bjørn,” he said awkwardly. “The very last ship my father worked on, the Long Serpent, she’s in Vinland now. Think of it, she sailed all that way! I’d like to follow after her, just once. I’d like to find Thorolf and say, ‘Remember me? I’m the son of the man who built your ship.’”

  Bjørn began to speak, then shook his head. They looked at each other while the gulls screamed, and the men shouted on the jetty, and the wind whipped their clothes.

  “One thing you should know,” Bjørn said at last. “Gunnar’s own men have been gossiping that he and Harald killed a man in Westfold and had to run for it. No wonder they’re on their way back to Vinland.”

  “That’s no secret,” said Peer. “He told us about it. That’s when he lost his hand. It was self-defence. The other man started it.”

  “You mean, the same way you ‘started’ that fight with Harald yesterday?”

  “You may be right,” said Peer after a pause. “But I won’t back out now.”

  Bjørn sighed. “Arne won’t change his mind, either. He’s always been crazy, but I thought you had sense. Well, stick together.” He caught Peer’s expression. “You can trust Arne. You know him. But keep out of Harald’s beautiful hair.” He clapped Peer on the back. “Come back rich! And now we’d better go and help, before Gunnar decides you’re nothing but a useless passenger.”

  “Don’t touch the sail,” Astrid said to Hilde. “That red colour comes off all over your clothes.”

  Hilde looked around, wondering where she could sit. The ship was full of scrambling seamen.

  “Keep out of their way.” Astrid perched on a barrel, forward of the mast, and began to tie her hair up in a headscarf. “It’ll be better when we’re sailing.”

  “Mind out, Miss.” One of the men pushed past Hilde. “Here, you, son,” – this was to Peer – “give me a hand with these oars.”

  Hilde craned her neck to see if Ma and Pa were still watching. Of course, they were. She gave a desperate little wave. This is awful. If only we could just get going.

  A rope flipped past her ears. Arne jumped down into the ship and pushed off aft. Bjørn tossed another rope down to him. Harald took the tiller. A gap of water opened between the ship and the jetty. Hilde stared at it. It was only a stride wide. She could step over that easily, if she wanted.

  With a heavy wooden clatter, the oars went out through the oarholes: only three on each side, but Water Snake was moving steadily away. For a moment longer, the gap was still narrow enough to jump: then, finally and for ever, too wide.

  Pa’s arm lifted. Sigurd and Sigrid waved, and she heard tem yelling, “Goodbye, goodbye!” Even Eirik opened and closed his fingers, and Sigrid flapped Elli’s arm up and down. But Ma didn’t move. Hilde raised her own arm and flailed it madly.

  Too late to say the things she should have said. I love you. I’ll miss you all so much. Too late to change her mind. Ma, please wave…

  And at last, Gudrun’s hand came slowly up. She waved, and as long as Hilde watched she continued to wave across the broadening water, till at last the jetty was out of sight.

  Hilde’s throat ached from not crying. She turned a stiff neck to l
ook round at the ship: her new world. Her new home. And there was Peer, wrenching away at one of the oars. He looked up and caught her eye, and gave her an odd, lopsided smile.

  It’s going to be all right, she thought, comforted.

  “Oars in,” Gunnar bellowed. “Up with the sail!”

  Water Snake began to seesaw, pitching and rolling over steep, choppy waves. Peer laid his wet oar on top of the others in a rattling pile, and scrambled to the stern to help pull on the halyard that raised the yard.

  “Hey – up! Hey – up!” Each heave lifted the heavy spar a foot or two higher. When it was halfway up the mast, Arne yanked the lacing to unfurl the sail, and swag upon swag of hard-woven, greasy fabric dropped across the ship. “Haul!” Up went the sail again, opening out like a vast red hand to blot out the sky and half the horizon: a towering square of living, struggling, flapping cloth. The men on the braces hauled the yard around, fighting for control. The sail tautened and filled, and the ship sped forwards so suddenly that Peer hd to catch at the shrouds to keep his balance.

  “Right lads, listen up!” shouted Gunnar. There was a better colour in his face: he straddled forwards, his good hand on Harald’s shoulder to help his balance, bad arm tucked under his cloak.

  “Some of us are old friends already. Magnus, Floki, Halfdan…” His eye roamed across the men, who grinned or nodded as he named them. “The way I like to run things is this: you jump when I say jump, and we’ll get along fine. We’re going a long way together, so if you don’t like the idea, you’d better start swimming.” He bared his teeth ferociously, and the men laughed. “I lost my hand a few weeks ago. If anyone thinks that makes me less of a man, speak up now.” The men glanced at each other. No one spoke. “We’re going to Vinland, boys, and we’ll come back rich! That’s all, except… we’re the crew of the Water Snake, we are, and there isn’t a better ship on the sea.”

  The men cheered. Even Peer felt a stirring in his blood. The crew of the Water Snake – sailing to Vinland, across the world!

  Waves smacked into the prow. The dragonhead nodded and plunged. They were out of the fjord already, and the wind was strengthening.

  He looked back. There was the familiar peak of Troll Fell, piebald with snow-streaks, but behind it, other mountains jostled into view, trying to get a good look at Water Snake as she sailed out. As the ship drew further and further away, the details vanished, and it became more and more difficult to pick out Troll Fell from amongst its rivals, until at last they all merged and flattened into a long blue smudge of coastline.

  Chapter 46

  The Winter Visitor

  KWIMU IS WIDE awake and wonders what has woken him. He’s in the wigwam, feet towards the fire, which still burns enough to warm the air. It’s the dead of night. Around him, his family sleeps, wrapped in warm furs.

  He raises himself, listening. Behind and above, his shadow rears against the sloping birch-bark walls. Everything seems well. He scans the sleeping faces near to him: Sinumkw, his father. Kiunik, his mother’s brother. Beside him, the pale face of Skusji’j, the Little Weasel. Across the fire on the women’s side, his mother, grandmother, aunt and sister sleep. Even the dogs are fast asleep, noses buried in their bushy tails.

  An owl calls: koo koo! Perhaps the owl woke him. He settles back on the springy fir boughs that layer the floor, draws the warm beaverskin robe up to his chin, and folds his arms behind his head, staring up to where the slanting poles of the wigwam come together high overhead, framing a patch of black sky.

  Outside, the snow is thick, the cold is strong. His stomach grumbles, but he’s not truly hungry. It’s been a good winter for the People, with plenty of game. No need to kill the dogs, as they had to do in the famine three winters back. Dog is good to eat, but moose is better: besides, Kwimu likes the dogs. They are good hunting companions.

  The worst of the winter is over. This is Sugar Moon, the forerunner of spring. Soon the sap will be rising in the sugar maples, and it will be time to collect it and boil it into thick, sweet syrup. Kwimu looks forward to showing Skusji’j how to pour little coils of hot syrup into the snow, where it cools into chewy candy. Then the thaw will come, the rivers will melt, and it will be time to move down to the seashore again. He glances again at Skusji’j. Hard to believe that nearly four seasons have passed since he and his father took the Little Weasel away from the deserted houses of the Jipijka’m People. The child had fought like a weasel, too, biting and scratching so fiercely they’d had to tie his hands and bundle him into the canoe all trussed up – till he realised they meant him no harm.

  And he’d been quick to pick up words – a gruff greeting, a yes or a no. Still, it was months before he could tell in stumbling sentences who he was and how he came in his people’s ships from a land across the ocean, a journey of a moon or more. Everyone there has pale skin. It sounds like the Ghost World. But the Little Weasel is no ghost.

  “He is my little brother,” Kwimu murmurs, and his heart is warm.

  He reaches for Fox, who doesn’t stir, even when Kwimu runs his hand over the pricked ears and sharp, pointed nose. Outside, the owl has stopped calling. Perhaps it has killed. Kwimu yawns. Why can’t he sleep? He’s not even drowsy.

  His mind roams back over a year of changes. He’d thought, after the Jipijka’m People had gone, that they could move down to the bay as usual. But Sinumkw hadn’t liked the idea. “How do we know if the Jipijka’m People have gone for good? What if they come back?” The rest of the men, after discussing it, agreed with him. They arranged with the Beaver Clan to share their shoreline and fishing grounds for the season. But what will happen this year? Grandmother says those dark earth houses are haunted. Angry ghosts sing songs there now, she says. It is a place of bad memories, best avoided.

  Kwimu lies thinking of it: the river where they built the fish weir, the shore where he’s dug for clams and oysters, the marshlands where ducks and geese gather in hundreds, and where huge brown moose sometimes wander out of the forests to splash through the boggy pools. Is it all lost for ever? Will we never go back?

  A branch cracks: a sharp, splintering, tearing sound. Kwimu starts, although branches break all the time. They snap like pipe stems, weighted with snow or split by frost.

  All the same, he holds his breath. The cold intensifies, the fire pines and dwindles. Just as he has to let his breath go in a cloud of vapour, he hears it again: another crack, and then heavy, slow footsteps in the snow. Crunch. Crunch.

  Beside him, Fox twists into sudden life. All through the wigwam, the family wakes, eyes flying open, breath caught. No one speaks. Even the dogs know better than to yap. Skusji’j sits up. He looks from face to face. “Muin?” he mouths to Kwimu. “Bear?”

  Kwimu shakes his head. All the bears are asleep. They won’t wake, hungry and bad tempered, till late spring.

  Crunch. Crunch. Something shuffles about the wigwam. Kwimu’s heart beats hard. The framework of the wigwam shudders as the thing outside jostles it, then picks at the walls, patting and fumbling. Kwimu’s little sister is panting with terror. Any moment now, the frail birch-bark walls will be trn away, exposing them to the bleak wind and icy stars, and to —

  Skusji’j cries out loudly in his own language, and as Kwimu turns on him in furious anger, repeats it in the language of the People: “See! See there!” He points. Something is blocking the star-shaped opening at the top of the wigwam: something dark and glistening that rolls about showing a yellowish-white rim, fixing for a malevolent moment on each person below.

  An eye as big as your hand.

  Sinumkw seizes his lance. Kwimu’s mother shrieks. But Grandmother springs nimbly to her feet, shaking off her covers. She catches up two of the fir branches that line the floor, and thrusts them into the fire. They crackle and catch, and she waves them upwards, streaming sparks.

  The eye vanishes. From high above, a terrible scream rings across the forest. The sound crushes them with its weight of cold anguish. They huddle, clutching each other, expecti
ng to be trodden and trampled. But the frozen ground shudders to the impact of huge feet running away.

  Before his father can forbid it, Kwimu dashes to the door of the wigwam, Skusji’j at his heels. He peels back the hide flap and scurries out into the bitter night. Around him the village is waking. Men stumble from the doorways of the nearest wigwams and call out in alarm. The treetops are dark against a sky hazy with moon-glimmer. A few hundred yards to the south-east, something crashes away through the trees, howling, brushing the very tops of the white pines.

  There are enormous, pitted tracks in the snow.

  Kiunik, Kwimu’s young uncle, ducks out of the wigwam and races towards the trees, yelling a war-cry, his black hair streaming loose. Some of the other young men join in, but the older ones call them roughly back: “It’s gone; let it go.”

  “We’ve been lucky: you can’t fight a jenu.”

  “What was it?” The Little Weasel tugs Kwimu’s arm. He looks like a ghost in the white darkness. “Kwimu, what was it?”

  “Jenu,” Kwimu mutters. “Ice giant. We have seen the jenu – and lived.”

  Chapter 47

  Ghost Stories

  “THERE ARE NO trolls in Vinland,” said Magnus confidently.

  Peer sat with his back against the curve of the side, rocking to the steady up and down of the ship. He could see sky, but not sea, and it was comforting to shut out for a while the sight of all that lonely vastness. The sun had just set: the top half of the sail still caught a ruddy glow on its western side.

  Water Snake was on the starboard tack, lifting and diving over the waves in a rhythm as easy as breathing. They were far from land – further than Peer had ever been before. This big ship seemed very small now – a speck of dust under a wide sky.

  The day had passed simply. At home there would be a hundred things to do: ploughing fields, chopping firewood, patching boats, mending nets. Here there was only one purpose, to sail on and on into the west.