“What’s that noise?” he asks.
Kwimu looks at him. It often worries him how much the Little Weasel does not know. This is Frog-Croaking Moon. In the boggy hollow down the slope, thousands of mating frogs keep up a constant, deafeningly loud, squeaky shrilling.
“That noise is frogs,” he explains. “Don’t you have frogs where you come from?”
“‘Sqoljk?’” The boy looks puzzled. He doesn’t know this word. Kwimu hooks two fingers in his mouth and pulls a wide frog grin. He tries to make his eyes bug out. He croaks and hops. Skusji’j falls over, laughing. “Oh, now I get it. Frogs!”
Kwimu laughs too. Fox grins. The boys chew companionably.
After a while, Skusji’j says, “What are the little ones playing?”
The small children have formed a long line, hands on each other’s shoulders. The leader calls out, “Look out for Swamp Woman!”
Kwimu’s little sister, Jipjawej, is creeping up on them. “I’m so-o-oo lonely,” she wails. “I’m coming to get you!” She runs at the line, which swings away from her, shrieking, but trying to stay joined. The line breaks up as Jipjawej grabs one of them, and the children tumble to get away from her. “Now you’ve got to be Swamp Woman!” she cries.
“Who is Swamp Woman?” asks the Little Weasel.
Kwimu wriggles his shoulders. “One of the Old Ones. She walks in the woods, especially in the boggy places. At evening she wanders around the edges of villages, singing, trying to lure people away, because she’s lonely. She doesn’t mean harm, but she comes from the Ghost World, where the dead people go.”
“I know a game like that,” says Skusji’j. “Only in our game it’s not Swamp Woman who does the chasing, it’s a wolf.”
“It isn’t just a game.”
“I know.” Skusji’j hesitates, stiffens. “Kwimu – when we move from here, where will we go? Has your father decided?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps to the lake.”
Skusji’j spits the gum into his palm. “I’m not a baby, Kwimu. You don’t have to protect me. I know what everyone’s saying.”
Kwimu is silent. Everyone used to speak of the bay as we’kowpaq, “the bay where we go in summer”. Now people are calling it skite’kmujue’katik – “the place of ghosts”.
“I’ve heard people talking.” The boy bites his lip. “Your father and Kiunik went back there, didn’t they? And they say —”
Kwimu sighs. “They say there is a great stir of the Other Ones in that quarter of the woods this spring. They heard strange singing, and the tree-cutter, Kewasu’nukwej, striking at the trees with his invisible axe. Grandmother thinks the Other Ones are angry because of your foreign ghosts.”
The Little Weasel says with a shiver, “And is that why the jenu came? You never told me anything more about it.”
“I know,” says Kwimu slowly. Speaking of such things may give them power.
“Is that why it came? Will it come back?” Skusji’j fixes anxious eyes on Kwimu’s face.
Kwimu shifts uneasily. Perhaps Skusji’j needs to know. He scoops up Fox and strokes his head. He lowers his voice. “Well, the jenu comes with the cold…”
And of course, his Grandmother hears him. “Kwimu! Come inside right now, and bring your younger brother too. You know what happens if you tell stories outside in springtime? The snakes all come and listen. You want that the camp should be full of snakes?”
The boys jump up, Skusji’j red with pride at being called Kwimu’s younger brother, and go in. It’s warm, with a good smell of roasting meat. Grandmother has hung a big piece over the fire, suspended on a doubled cord that twists and untwists, first one way, then the other, so that it will cook evenly. Sinumkw and Kiunik are playing waltes at the back of the wigwam – banging the bowl down to make the dice jump, and laughing over the scores. Kiunik’s young wife Plawej sits beside him, tickling the baby on her lap.
“Grandmother,” Kwimu begins, “Skusji’j has a question.”
Grandmother looks at the Little Weasel. Her eyes are shrewd, and her hair, bound back with strings of painted eelskin sewn with shells, is almost as thick and black and strong as a girl’s. “What is this question, nuji’j?”
Kwimu’s little brother screws up his face. He says in a rush, “Nukumij – Grandmother – did the jenu come because of what happened down at the bay?”
“Ah.” Grandmother reaches out a wrinkled hand and brushes his cheek. “Don’t worry, little one. Don’t worry, nuji’j. That was not your fault.”
“It was the fault of his people,” Kiunik interrupts sharply, looking up from the game. “I still say we should camp there this year. Pull down their houses and drive out their ghosts.”
Sinumkw shakes his head. “Then they would wander loose in the woods. People should not interfere between Other Ones and ghosts.”
“Ghosts don’t frighten me,” Kiunik declares. He rubs his hands over his scalp, flattening his black crest and letting it spring up again. He steals a sideways glance at Plawej, looking for her approval. She smiles at him and goes on singing softly to the baby:
“Let’s go up on to the beautiful mountain
and watch the little stars playing follow-my-leader,
while Grandmother Lightning lights her pipe,
and Grandfather Thunder beats his drum.”
The baby gurgles. Kiunik leans across and picks up his little son, tosses him into the air, catches him, and kisses him. He rolls back on to the fir boughs and lets the baby play with the big bearclaw necklace on his chest.
Grandmother shakes her head at him. “Those ghosts are not angry with us, Kiunik. The Other Persons are not angry. But they are disturbed, like bees swarming when a bear breaks into their nest. Keep away, and you will not be stung. But the jenu, now. The jenu is different, and I will tell you how.”
But her face is troubled. Instead of beginning, she takes out her slender-stemmed pipe and hands it to Kwimu. “Light it. The smoke will help me.”
Kwimu fills the pipe with a pinch of red willow bark mixed with lobelia leaves. He lights it and hands it respectfully to his grandmother. She fans a little of the sweet smoke over the boys and says quietly, “This winter has been easy. There has been plenty to eat, plenty of game. Last winter, too. But we all remember the winter before that when it was not so good. There were many blinding snowstorms. The moose and the caribou were scarce. Everyone was hungry. Some of the children died.” She pauses. “Kwimu’s little brother died.”
Kwimu closes his mouth hard. He forces his face to remain steady, emotionless. The Little Weasel shoots him a sudden round-eyed glance.
Grandmother nods. “Yes. It’s good for Kwimu to have a little brother again.”
She smokes thoughtfully for a while. “And that’s how life is: good winters and bad ones, times of hunger and times of plenty. But in the very worst winters, Eula’qmuejit, Starvation, comes tiptoeing through the villages, lifting the flaps of the wigwams, blowing his icy breath to chill the people’s hearts.
“So long as we care for one another and share what food and warmth we have, he cannot harm us. But sometimes, if the winter is very hard, we may see a terrible change creeping over one of our neighbours. He will not join in the songs we sing at the fireside to help us forget the hunger. He sits in the cold at the wall of the wigwam, glaring at the others with red-rimmed eyes, gnawing on his own knuckles, dreaming of human flesh. His heart is hardening into ice.”
The thin smoke rises from Grandmother’s pipe, ascending to the ghosts and the ancestors. “They say this happened to my mother’s uncle. Perhaps, at first, he was afraid of himself – afraid of what he might do to his kinfolk. He ran off into the night, crazy as a wolf. At sunrise his brothers went after him, following his trail.”
Everyone is quiet, listening very seriously to Grandmother’s story.
“First they see his moccasins, kicked off, and the neat marks of bare feet running through the snow. Then they find his coat tossed into the bushes. He has pulled o
ff his clothes to run naked in the biting wind that makes his brothers shudder and pull their faces deep inside their fur hoods. Soon they notice blood in his tracks. The sharp crust of the snow has cut his feet, but instead of limping and stumbling, he’s running faster and faster, till at last his footprints are so far apart he must be leaping like a moose. And it’s then that the brothers see that the barefoot tracks are changing. Growing longer, larger, like a bear’s, with great gouging marks at the toes.
“Deep in the woods, the brothers stop. Around them the branches rub and squeak in the cold wind. They stare at these tracks, which are no longer the marks of human feet, and the hair rises on their necks.
“From far ahead, the wind carries a bone-chilling scream. It is too late to save their brother. They are afraid to go on, afraid to follow those great clawed marks. What if their quarry has already turned, racing back down the trail with terrible speed? What if he has begun hunting them? He will tear them apart and eat them raw.
“And that is what a jenu is, little son. Not one of the Old Ones or the Others, but a man who has lost his humanity. Inside every jenu, they say, is a frozen core, a little man-shaped lump of ice. Nothing else is left.”
“Then what was it doing?” Skusji’j asks in a whisper. “What was it looking for when it came to our village?”
“Food,” says Grandmother simply. “A jenu is always hungry. It prowls in the woods all winter, looking for fat. If it finds a village, it rips the bark from the wigwams and drags us out as we would break open a beaver dam. It comes with the snow and retreats with the snow. Only fire can harm it, because its heart is made of ice.”
“And is there more than one?” the Little Weasel asks. Grandmother shrugs. “Never many. When my father was a boy, he heard two jenu calling to each other from two blue mountain tops. Cold heart crying to cold heart, he told me. A dreadful, lonely sound. They are drawn to each other, and yet they hate each other. If two jenu met, they will fight till one eats the other up.”
“They eat each other?” asks the Little Weasel.
“A jenu eats anything,” Kiunik sits up, frowning. “See what you’ve brought on us – you and your people.”
“That’s not fair,” says Kwimu hotly. “It wasn’t his fault that the jenu came. It was bad luck. And good luck that Grandmother knew what to do.”
“Did I say it was the Little Weasel’s fault?” Kiunik’s dark eyes flash. “I only say that the Jipijka’m People came, and the jenu followed. Yes: it was bad luck. Bad that his people came to the bay. Bad that they killed each other there. I think bad luck breeds bad luck. And things like the jenu are drawn to it – like moths to a flame.”
“You are right,” Sinumkw agrees. “That’s why I don’t want to stay there this year. We’ll go to the lake instead.”
“The lake’s a good place, but so is the bay. We shouldn’t abandon it,” Kiunik argues.
“Kiunik,” Plawej pleads softly. “Remember, it’s the Place of Ghosts now.”
“I’m not afraid!” Kiunik hands the baby back to his wife and swings to his feet. “And I’ll not be driven out. Those are our hunting grounds, our traplines. I’ll go there whenever I like.”
He pushes out of the wigwam into the twilight.
“What a hot-head,” Sinumkw complains, pretending to be annoyed. But he looks after the tall young man with affectionate approval.
Grandmother lays her pipe aside and looks at the Little Weasel’s worried face.
“The jenu has gone now,” she says soothingly. Her eyes are very kind and bright. “Gone far away into the north, to live upon mosses and grass. Now is the hungry time for the jenu, while we grow fat. It can’t endure summer. In the summer we are safe.”
“Wonderful summer,” says Kwimu, smiling, and he stretches his arms wide, and wider, as if to embrace the whole green, growing world.
Chapter 52
Serpent’s Bay
WATER SNAKE GLIDED in over the shallows. Peer looked down through clear water at thickets of groping weed, and pale undulations of sandy gravel.
“Serpent’s Bay!”
“Serpent’s Bay…”
It was late afternoon. With four oars out, they were rowing in to the mouth of a river. It ran from a tuck in the hills and flowed across meadowlands and a shelving gravel beach to empty into the bay.
A black cormorant flew over. The trees made a dark fringe around the bay, rising into wooded slopes. The clear voices of Astrid and Hilde echoed off the shore.
“There are the houses!”
“I see them!” Then, after a pause: “But… they look empty.”
Peer cupped his hands around his eyes. The two houses he’d heard so much about squatted side by side on rising ground behind the meadowlands. They looked just like Ralf ’s farm: small and homely, with thick grassy roofs. The doorway of the nearest seemed to have been left half open.
No smoke rose from the houses, no voices called in excited welcome. Where was the busy, bustling settlement Peer had imagined, with Thorolf ’s little boy waving cheerily from the roof?
And there was no ship drawn up on the beach or moored in the river.
“Where’s the Long Serpent?” he asked.
Arne twisted to look over his shoulder as he sat rowing in the bows. “Where’s Thorolf, skipper?” he sang out. The oars swung raggedly as the other men tried to look too. “Where’s Thorolf?”
“Keep rowing,” Gunnar grunted. “How should I know where he is? I’m not his master.”
“They’ve gone.” Hilde’s voice was hollow. Peer knew what she was thinking. Five years.
“They’ll be back,” he said, as much to comfort himself as Hilde.
“I thought you said Thorolf had settled here,” Tjørvi called to Gunnar.
“He must have changed his mind,” Gunnar said shortly.
Tjørvi snatched a quick glance shorewards and his oar clashed with Magnus’s.
“Watch your stroke,” Magnus snarled.
“Concentrate, boys,” Gunnar bawled. “We’ll put her aground on the beach. Harald, steer for the houses. Pull!”
Harald leaned on the tiller. The men heaved. Water Snake slipped towards the shore. Her prow grated into the shingle.
The crew broke into cheers. The noise was oddly thin, rebounding off the shore. Startled waterfowl clattered off across the tranquil river, honking alarms.
But the air was sweet, smelling of earth and forest – of rich soil, black bog, fresh water. Peer filled his lungs and forgot about Thorolf. We’re here! We made it! We’re in Vinland!
“First one ashore...!” Arne vaulted into knee-deep water, whooping. Peer leaped after him. Floki and Halfdan came tumbling after. Magnus methodically shipped his oar and clambered down. They splashed on to the gravel. Land! Solid footing, for the first time in weeks! It rocked under Peer, and he stumbled. Magnus laughed. “Aye, you’ll be unsteady for a while… Odd, seeing the old ship from the outside again, ain’t it?”
It was. How huge she’d seemed, coming in to the jetty at Trollsvik! Now Peer just wondered how on earth he’d crossed the ocean in anything so cramped and small. Her paintwork looked even more faded than before. Her sail was down, an untidy crumple of sea-stained fabric. Ropes trailed everywhere. But the dragonhead glared inland with all its old, stiff-necked arrogance.
Loki’s head and two front paws appeared over the side. He jumped, hitting the water with a crash of spray, then swimming steadily to shore. When his paws touched, he bounded out and shook himself all over Magnus and Floki.
Hilde leaned out, looking down. “Is it deep? Shall I jump?”
“Your dress will get soaked. I can carry you.” Peer reached up to her. “If you sit on the edge, I’ll take you on my back.” “Don’t trust him, Hilde,” said Arne, wading up. “He’ll drop you. Better come with me, I’m stronger.” He flexed his arms in a mock show of strength.
“How strong do you think you need to be?” asked Hilde, laughing.
“Here’s an easier way,” Tj�
�rvi called. He and Halfdan were man-handling a long gangplank. Once it was firmly settled between ship and shore, Tjørvi swept off his cap. “Would the Lady Hilde care to descend?”
“Thank you, Tjørvi.” Hilde caught Tjørvi’s hand and he walked her down. At the bottom she dropped him a curtsy. Tjørvi bowed. “See?” he said over his shoulder to Peer and Arne. “She likes me best.” He went back to help Astrid.
“Vinland,” breathed Hilde. She staggered, and Peer saw her eyes widen. “I feel as if I’m still on the ship. Oh, that’s strange.”
“You’ll soon get your land legs back if you walk around a bit,” Magnus told her.
“Walk?” Hilde picked up her skirts. “Ha! Who’ll race me to the houses?”
“Not me,” said Astrid, stepping cautiously down the gangplank. “I’m not running anywhere. Oops!” She checked as something small and light rushed past her skirts. With a patter of feet, a disturbance of the gravel, it dashed into the grass. Tjørvi’s head jerked round. “Did you see that damn great rat come ashore?” he exclaimed. Peer smothered a smile.
And Hilde was off too, tearing up the slope towards the houses, plaits flying. “Wait,” yelled Peer. “It might not be safe.” He plunged after her. On legs that seemed hardly to obey them they ran across spongy, springy meadows patched with bright green moss and pocked with boggy holes. Birds whirred up everywhere. Loki streaked ahead.
Hilde reached the nearest house and disappeared. Peer flung himself at the door. It opened inwards, protected by a rough wooden porch sticking out of the turf roof.
It was cold inside. The thick turf walls cut off all sound. The house smelled of frost-bitten earth and old smoke, and it was so gloomy Peer could hardly see. There were no windows. A little light splashed through the smoke holes in the roof, gleaming on Hilde’s pale hair as she stood, looking around. The only other light came from the doorway. Gradually Peer made out two lines of wooden posts supporting the rafters. Down the middle of the house ran the fire-pit, edged with stones. At either side long sleeping benches lined the walls. At the far end, another doorway led into a small second room. That would be for Astrid and Gunnar, Peer guessed.
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