North Child

by Edith Pattou

  Mother had risen from her place beside Sara’s bed. “You would make our Sara well?” she said in a near whisper. Her eyes burned with a look of desperate hope.

  “Yes.” It was a growl.

  “How?”

  “If you will give me your youngest daughter, then the one who lies near death…” And he seemed on the verge of saying it all over again.

  But Father stepped forwards. He looked like someone who had just gathered his wits after a blow. “Enough,” he said loudly. “You shall not have Rose. Or any one of us.”

  The white bear turned to look at Father, and then swung his head in Rose’s direction. “Do not decide now,” he said, and this time he was speaking directly to her. “I will return in seven days. I will hear your answer then.”

  He turned and made his way to the door. And though I had seen Rose shut it securely, the door seemed to open of its own volition and the bear went through, disappearing into the night.

  Father quickly crossed to the door and shut it with a slam.

  We were all stunned and quiet. Had it not been for the large puddle of water in the middle of the room where the bear had been standing, I think that, except for Rose and Mother, none of us would have believed the thing had happened at all.

  “Arne,” said Mother.

  “Father,” came Rose’s voice.

  They spoke at the same time, but Father shook his head.

  “We will not talk further of this,” he said, his voice deep, with a dangerous, implacable tone. “It is madness and sorcery and we will not be part of it. Not for any wild promises or guarantees of riches.”

  “But Arne,” my mother said. “Think of our Sara…”

  “No!” he thundered. I couldn’t recall ever hearing Father raise his voice to Mother before. It was almost as shocking as the talking white bear.

  Mother, her face white and strained, said, “But we must honour his request. If we do not ’twould only bring the greatest ill fortune and calamity upon us all.”

  “Eugenia,” Father said, and his face was taut with rage, “we will talk no further of this. Go to Sara. The cold air can have done her little good.”

  And Mother complied, but despite the frightening anger in Father, there was still that burning hopeful light in her eyes, and I knew she would not leave the matter as it stood.

  I went for a shawl for Sonja, who was trembling, then I crossed to Rose. She had seated herself in a chair by the fire, and I sat beside her. She was not shivering, though her skin felt cold to the touch when I took her hand. And she, too, had an expression in her eyes that frightened me. It was not hope but excitement, mingled with traces of confusion and fear.

  “What can it mean, Neddy?” she said in wonder.

  I shook my head.

  “When I was little, Mother told me stories about animals that could speak. I didn’t believe her, not really, but now…”

  I remained silent.

  “Did you see how his fur glowed?”

  “It was wet from the rain,” I said abstractedly.

  “A white bear,” she breathed. “Just like the one I had as an imaginary companion when I was a child.”

  I leaned over to poke the fire.

  “And did you see his eyes? Oh, Neddy, do you think he can be the same bear I saw the other day? I think it is.”

  I shook my head, for some reason wanting to discourage the idea. But then Father came up, interrupting us. “There are still dishes to be cleaned, and I think then we had all better go to bed.”

  We both stood up, obediently. Then Father caught Rose’s hand. “I will not let any wild beast take you, Rose,” he said to her. “You know that. I will always keep you safe.”

  “But Father, what of Sara?”

  “We will care for her. She will get better.”

  Rose shook her head. “We should at least have listened to—”

  “No,” Father broke in decisively.

  Later, as we made our way to our beds, Rose whispered, “Why does the white bear want me, Neddy?”

  I shook my head. I could not guess, except that somehow I felt sure it had something to do with the sadness in the animal’s eyes. Some great need.

  During the days that followed, I felt nervy, jangled. I jumped at the slightest noise and could not concentrate on anything for longer than a minute or two.

  We were all on edge.

  Father forbade any discussion of the white bear and his request. I could hear him quarrelling about it at night with Mother. They tried to keep their voices low, but one night I could not help overhearing what they said.

  “I will not sacrifice one daughter for another,” Father said.

  “’Tis not a matter of that,” Mother replied. “And if we do nothing, Sara will surely die.”

  “What makes you so certain that this white bear will heal Sara?”

  Mother spoke softly in reply and I could not make out the words.

  But then Father cut into the low rumble of her voice. “Are you truly willing to put Rose’s life in the hands of a wild creature of the north for a questionable promise of miracles? It is folly. If Rose goes with the white bear, we will surely never see her again. To barter her life for Sara’s health – well, it is not even a matter for debate.”

  As the seven days passed, Sara got no worse, but neither did she get better. The local healer said there was nothing more we could do other than continue the herbal infusions we had been giving her. We went about the business of readying ourselves for the move to neighbour Torsk’s farm until such time as we would hear from Father’s family.

  I thought mostly of the white bear; I could think of little else. And I had made up my mind that despite my father’s objections, I must accept the bear’s offer.

  I tried speaking about it with Neddy one afternoon as we folded our meagre supply of linens into a trunk.

  “I will go with the white bear,” I blurted out.

  Neddy looked at me with horror.

  “I cannot stand by and let Sara die,” I continued, my words spilling over one another in my haste to make Neddy understand, “not when there is something I can do to prevent it.”

  “Rose,” Neddy implored, “you must not even consider it!”

  “And the bear has said that he will take away this poverty into which we have sunk,” I said, ignoring him. “Just think, Neddy, Father could make maps again. And you, you could go to Bergen and study with scholars, the way you have always dreamed.”

  “No!” Neddy said forcefully. “Even if the creature could bring such a thing to be, it would not be worth the price you must pay.”

  I was silent. I could see that talking it out with Neddy would be fruitless. I must keep my thoughts and plans to myself.

  Aside from the more logical reasons for going with the white bear, I had another reason. And that was simply that I wanted to go. It was madness, I knew, to consider going off into unknown lands with a wild beast that would most likely devour me at journey’s end. I did not want to die. And yet, I wanted to go.

  I knew Father would never agree to it.

  As for Mother, it confused me to hear her arguing in favour of accepting the white bear’s offer. Did she love me so little? If it were Elise the bear had asked for, would Mother have been so eager to hand her over?

  On the sixth day after the visit of the white bear, I returned early from Widow Hautzig’s. As I entered the outer room of the farmhouse, I chanced to hear Father and Mother talking loudly from inside the great room. I thought they were arguing again, and was on the verge of making my presence known to them when I heard Father say, his voice anguished, “It is nonsense, I know, but I keep thinking that it is the lie of Rose’s birth that is behind this.”

  Lie? I felt the hairs on my neck rise.

  Mother’s voice came back, sharp. “There is no lie. She is Ebba Rose.”

  “Eugenia, she is no east child. You and I both know it.”

  “She is Ebba Rose.” The words were said slowly, implacably, as
if to a halfwit.

  “No,” and Father’s voice was loud. “She is Nyamh.”

  “Nyamh?” There was a pause. “She is not Nyamh.” Mother’s voice was now cold. “I thought you did not even believe in birth direction. Superstition, you always say.”

  “Nor do I,” Father answered. “At least I did not think I did. My mind is all turned around these days. But I will tell you, when I first held her I looked into her eyes and she was Nyamh. And I have always called her so, in my heart.”

  The tangled truth behind my father’s words began to unravel itself inside me.

  Nyamh begins with an N. North. I had been conceived to take Elise’s place. But I was a north bairn. I had filled my own place on the compass rose. I felt a great excitement stir in my chest. And then, great anger. My breath grew short and my cheeks were flaming.

  My father and mother had lied to me all those years. I moved towards them, without thinking, and in doing so my elbow caught a wooden bowl, which clattered to the floor.

  “Who’s that? Is someone there?” called Father.

  Suddenly I did not want to see their faces. Not then. I needed to think. I bolted out of the house, refastening my cloak against the cold autumn day.

  As I ran I became aware that, in addition to the anger, a sense of exhilaration was growing in me, the feeling of a puzzle piece falling into place. I was a north. It was obvious. No wonder Mother had tried so hard to keep me close, to mould me into another Elise.

  Mother’s feelings about north people were well known to us all. Every time she heard of some wild or destructive act by a stranger, she would inevitably shake her head with disapproval and say, “That’s a north-born, mark my words.”

  I knew that my birth had come on suddenly on a stormy afternoon. Mother must have fabricated a truth she could live with. And Father had gone along with it. “The lie of Rose’s birth… Nyamh.”

  I felt as though I no longer knew my parents. Or myself.

  Then I thought of the wind rose Father had designed for me. It was a lie as well. I tore off the cloak I had made and spread it on the ground.

  I kneeled by the design. Yes, there was the sun rising. But the white form I had always thought to be a cloud was a bear. I could see it now, upside down. White bear, isbjorn, stood for north. Father had not been able to help himself. The truth was there, too. Truth and lie, side by side.

  Nyamh. He called me Nyamh when first he held me as a babe. Ebba was a lie. I had never liked the name Ebba, I thought, smiling grimly to myself. Was Rose a lie, too? No, Rose was at the centre of the wind rose. One need be no direction at all to be Rose.

  And then it struck me. Did anyone else know? Was it just Mother and Father’s secret, or…? Did Neddy know?

  For some reason I had to find out.

  Neddy was at our neighbour’s, helping repair a fence. I picked up my cloak and draped it over my arm. I did not want to wear it any more. Shivering, I began making my way in the direction of Torsk’s farm.

  It was nearing twilight when we finished with the fence. I bade good evening to Torsk and watched for a moment as the big man shambled away. He was a good soul. I could not help but wonder what he would say if I told him that six days before a white bear had come into our great room and asked to take Rose away in exchange for Sara’s restored health and a life of ease. I could picture Torsk’s expression, a sort of gentle bewilderment; then he would smile and say, “One of your stories, is it, Master Ned?”

  It sounded like a story, one murmured by the fireside to an audience of wide-eyed children on a winter night. One of the old tales, of Loki, shape-shifted into a white bear, demanding the life of one maiden to buy eternal happiness for Midgard, the land of the humans. It was not the kind of thing that truly happened in ordinary life. For all that I loved the old tales of magic, I did not actually want there to be talking animals and mysterious requests on storm-tossed nights. Such things were for stories and ought to remain there.

  During those six days I tried very hard to convince myself that it had not happened. That we had all had some sort of collective dream. It could have been that way. It was no stranger a notion than what had actually unfolded in our great room.

  But I knew it had happened. And that the next day the white bear would return.

  Though we had not spoken together alone since that night, I had been watching Rose and suspected that she was still planning to go with the bear. The thought of her leaving filled me with an overpowering ache, and I vowed to myself that I would not let her go – no matter what.

  As I rounded the bend to our farmhold, I was surprised to see Rose coming towards me. The air was cold, and yet I noticed she was carrying her cloak instead of wearing it. I felt a tremor of alarm. As she drew nearer I could see she was very pale, and there was a wildness about her eyes. At first I thought she had been crying but could see no trace of tears.

  “Rose, what is it? What has happened?” I queried, fearing that Sara might have gotten worse.

  Rose was staring at me strangely, as if trying to read something in my face.

  Abruptly she took her cloak in her hands, and as she had done on that day that now seemed so long ago, she shook it out, splaying it wide. The afternoon was still and cold, and the wind did not catch the cloak as before. Carefully she spread it out on the ground, then looked up at me again.

  “Rose?”

  Still she did not speak.

  “You’re shivering. Why do you not put the cloak on?”

  “Did you know?” she asked, her voice higher than usual.

  “Know what?”

  “The lie? ‘The lie of Rose’s birth.’ The lie in there.” She jabbed a finger towards the cloak.

  I stared back at her, bewildered.

  “The lie, Neddy. I was born for Elise. East. But I am Nyamh.” She said the name defiantly.

  I still did not understand, although some glimmer of the truth was beginning to dawn on me.

  “I am north, Neddy, not east. A true north.” And she kneeled and pointed to the white cloud at the north of the wind rose in her cloak. “A white bear for north,” she said.

  So she had learned the truth at last. A truth that I had guessed at a long time before.

  She read it in my face. “You knew! Didn’t you, Neddy?”

  I was silent a moment. Then I nodded. I saw tears come into her eyes, though she blinked them away angrily.

  “At least…I didn’t truly know,” I said quickly. “I guessed.”

  “Why did you say nothing?”

  “Because…it was only a guess, and I…” How could I explain that I felt the same way as Mother? I did not want Rose to be a north if it meant she would always be going away.

  Her eyes suddenly blazed. “I do not know you, any of you.” And to my horror she grabbed up her cloak, and using her teeth to make the first tear, she savagely tore it in two. Then she took each of the two halves and ripped them again.

  “North, south, east, west,” she chanted, “who’s the one you love the best…?” She tossed the ruined cloak at me and stalked away.

  I picked up the torn pieces and followed after her.

  “Rosie!” I called. “Please wait.”

  She slowed. I put a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry. I thought I must be wrong. I could not imagine Mother and Father lying about such a thing.”

  She turned and I pulled her to me, holding her close. She was trembling so violently that I took off my own coat and wrapped it around her. “It’s all right,” I murmured. Gradually her shaking lessened.

  Then she looked up at me and said, “I mean to go with the white bear, Neddy.”

  “No,” I said sharply. “You cannot.”

  “You won’t change my mind,” she said. “Perhaps it was always my destiny.” She pointed to the topmost piece of torn cloak that I carried. It was the section with the design of the white bear.

  I stared at the white shape. “You must not go,” I said. “Father will not allow it,” I added somewhat lam
ely.

  “He cannot stop me.”

  “Please do not set your mind on it, Rose. Not yet. Maybe Sara will be better in the morning.”

  Rose was silent, then nodded. “I will think on it. But in exchange you must promise me, Neddy, that you will not tell Father that I have learned the truth. Nor tell him that I am thinking of going with the white bear.”

  Clutching at these small shreds of hope, I agreed.

  When we returned it was almost suppertime and everyone was busy. No one noticed that Rose wore my coat and that I carried the four pieces of her cloak. Silently I offered Rose the pile of fabric, but she shook her head and, handing me my coat, went to help with the meal. Not certain what else to do, I stuffed the pieces into my coat pockets.

  That evening Father broke his silence about the white bear.

  “Tomorrow we will do as we always do,” he said, “but in the evening only I will stay to give the bear his answer. The rest of you will go to neighbour Torsk’s farmhold. We will think of some reason to tell Torsk, perhaps repair work that I must do on my own, work that would disturb Sara. And you will all stay with Torsk until I come for you.”

  Several voices spoke at once, objecting to this plan. Mother felt strongly that both she and Rose should be with Father when the bear came. And Willem and I both insisted that we should be there, in case the animal should attack.

  Then Rose spoke out, her voice quiet and firm. “I must stay with you, Father.”

  “No,” Father said, his own voice just as firm. “I will not allow it.”

  “The white bear may require an answer from me.”

  “She is right, Arne,” Mother put in.

  “No,” he said again.

  Rose took a breath, spots of colour in her cheeks. “If I am not here when the white bear comes,” she said calmly, “is it not possible that he may come to neighbour Torsk’s, putting him in danger as well?”

  Father shook his head, but I could see doubt come into his eyes. There was silence for a few moments and then finally he said, “Very well. You may stay.”

  “Let me stay, too, Father,” I said quickly.

  He nodded curtly. I wondered if he, too, feared what Rose might do and wanted two of us there to stop her should the worst occur.