North Child

by Edith Pattou

  First, though, the sail. It took some time to drag up the portion that hung over the side, but finally I had it all in, stretched out on the deck to dry in the sun. There was a jagged tear across much of the bottom of it. In the process of moving the sail, I found one of the buckets and bailed until well after sunset.

  I thought the ship might be headed west, because the sun had set directly in front of us. But east or west…in truth it mattered little in which direction we were heading because I had no idea where we were.

  It grew cold without the sun. I searched but could not find any of the skin-sacks we had slept in on the ship. Exhausted, I crawled under the cloth I had used to cover Thor and lay beside him, thinking to keep us both warm. I must have dozed, for I suddenly came awake, uneasily, with the feeling that I was being watched. Disoriented, I thought for a moment that I was back in the castle and had just awakened beside my visitor.

  But it was Thor’s blue eyes that were gazing on me. They were unfocused and unreadable, but they were open.

  The night was surprisingly bright; the moon was half full and the stars were like a million cold-flamed flickering candles spread across the sky. I could see Thor’s face clearly. I sat up.

  “Thor?” I said. He did not reply; nor did his gaze waver from my face.

  “You were injured,” I explained.

  He blinked and tried to move his injured arm towards his face. Then he let out a groan and stopped moving. “Gest, Goran…”

  I could just barely make out the mumbled words. “They are gone,” I said simply.

  He closed his eyes then and kept them closed.

  “Thor?” I whispered, feeling for his pulse.

  His lids twitched.

  “Rest now,” I said, and I settled back down beside him. I listened intently to his breathing, which was ragged for a while but finally became more regular. Then I, too, slept.

  When I awoke again it was dawn. The wind had freshened and the sun shone in a cloudless sky. Thor still slept.

  I rose and stretched. If only I could repair the sail enough so that I could use it, maybe I could sail the knorr on my own. But even as I thought that, I knew it would be impossible. I hadn’t the strength or the skill. I cursed myself for not paying closer attention to the men as they worked the sail. What would I do if Thor did not recover?

  Luckily, there was food as well as water. I had found both when I searched the ship. Secure in a spot under the deck boards of the stern had been a crate of hard bread as well as a barrel of smoked and dried fish. I had also been quite excited to find a small box filled with pears from Fransk, which Gest had told me Thor planned to sell to the Njordens for a profit. But most important of all, I found two large casks of freshwater, along with four of ale and several of wine. I should have known that Thor’s precious ale would survive – he stored it in the most protected spot on the ship.

  I moved towards the centre of the ship to see if there was any way I could light a cooking fire. I had found the cauldron and tripod the day before, also lodged under the sail, but there was nothing dry enough to use for kindling. I hurriedly ate a small meal of bread and smoked fish, then went to Thor.

  He was awake, staring up at the sky. I filled a cup with water and sat beside him.

  “Thor, drink this.”

  He glanced at me, then turned his gaze upward again. “Leave me be,” he muttered.

  “Just a little water,” I coaxed.

  He ignored me.

  His manner frightened me. There was a blankness in his face, and it seemed as if he had made a choice to die rather than fight.

  I sat still, uncertain of what to do.

  “Thor…” I said. “You need water.”

  He did not respond.

  I held the cup to his lips. “Please…”

  He reached up with his left hand and, with a jerking motion, swatted the cup. The water spilled out, soaking the front of his clothing. “Leave me be,” he repeated.

  I felt a stirring of anger. He had wasted a cupful of precious water.

  I left him. The sail was almost dry and I set about mending the tear in it. The cloth was thick, and it was difficult working a needle through it. It took most of the day to complete the mending. I checked on Thor frequently, each time offering food or water. But he continued to ignore me. I had seen his look before, in the eyes of a mother cow that had lost too much blood in a difficult birth and in those of a lamb whose neck had been broken in a fall.

  I felt grief for the man, but also fear for myself. And I felt occasional surges of careless anger as I sat, thrusting my needle through the heavy cloth of the sail. Let him die if he chooses. I will manage.

  But then I would look at the broken mast, the endless sea around me, and knew I could not.

  I made the final knot and gazed at my handiwork with a sense of futility. I would never be able to raise the cursed thing. With an oath that would have done Thor proud, I stood and crossed to the dying man.

  Standing over him I said loudly, “All right, go ahead and die! You called Gest and Goran cowards for lowering the sail, but it is you who is the coward.”

  His eyes flicked over at me and I thought I saw a spark of something in them.

  “I did not think ’twas the way of a Viking to slink into death like a wounded lamb,” I went on recklessly.

  Then Thor muttered something I could not hear, but it sounded like he was cursing me.

  “You may curse me all you like, but I am not the one who has given up,” I said.

  He raised his head and said, his teeth bared, “I am no coward.”

  “Then drink this,” I challenged, holding the cup of water up to his face.

  “To Niflheim with your blasted water,” Thor rasped. “Bring me ale.”

  Without hesitating I quickly went to the casks of ale and drew him a brimming cupful. I held it to his lips, but he brought up his left hand and roughly took the cup from me. While he drank I got some hard bread and smoked fish. The ale was gone when I returned, and he snatched the food from me, crumbling it into pieces that he stuffed in his mouth.

  “More ale,” he muttered between bites.

  The letter from Rose arrived just after the fall harvest.

  Dear Neddy,

  I am writing to tell you that I am safe and well and no longer living at the castle with the white bear. It is a long story and one I hope to tell you at the end of my journey. But I made a wrong choice, one that hurt someone very badly, so I must now undertake a journey to a far distant land – one that lies east of the sun and west of the moon.

  Because you are cleverer than me, you will have already figured out that there is no such land. Nevertheless, I go there. It seems right somehow that I should journey to a place that does not exist; it is where Mother always feared I would end up.

  And please tell Mother the candle worked all too well. But tell her, too, that the choice to use it was mine and I do not blame her.

  Just as the blame is mine, the journey, too, is mine, and I must undertake it alone. So do not try to come to me. I need to set right the wrong I have done, and when I have I will return home. Trust me, Neddy, and try not to worry.

  Tell Father I love him. And tell Mother and Sonja and Willem and Sara that I miss them and hope that we will all be reunited before too long.

  My love to you, Neddy.

  Your sister, Rose

  During the next few days the weather stayed fair. Thor continued to lie where he was while I brought him food and ale – mostly ale. He finally had me roll the cask over and set it beside him so that he could refill his own cup.

  I had my doubts that ale, especially in the amounts he was consuming, was a particularly healing drink. But at least he had decided to live, and he had the constitution of an ox. Each day he gained in strength. The grey pallor was gone and the wound on his forehead was healing.

  Thor was soon sitting up and, on the second day, even stood for a few minutes, leaning on a makeshift crutch I had fashioned from a spli
ntered deck board.

  As he lowered himself back into a sitting position, I asked, “Do you think it possible that Gest and Goran could have survived?”

  Thor snorted, then took a long draught of ale.

  “But they might have gotten hold of something to float on. They were good swimmers, and perhaps there was land…” I gazed out over the endless expanse of water. “Well, isn’t it possible?”

  “Anything’s possible,” Thor said. After refilling his cup he leaned back, eyes closed.

  “I had a son once,” I heard him say.

  “You did?” I said stupidly. I had never pictured Thor as having any kind of life outside the ship, especially not a family.

  “Egil was his name. Died at the hands of a band of thieves and murderers. Along with his mother. My wife.” His voice had softened slightly as he said wife.

  When he opened his eyes, they were laced with bitterness. “It is possible they would have lived if I had been there to protect them. But they died. Like Gest and Goran. And like I would have if you’d left me alone.”

  “Well, I couldn’t leave you alone. And you saved my life, sticking me under the deck boards the way you did. ’Twas only common courtesy to return the favour.”

  Thor suddenly threw his head back and laughed. It was a full-throated reckless sound, and I liked the sound of it, even though I knew he was drunk.

  “May I commend you on your manners?” he said.

  I laughed, too, and there was some sort of softening between us. After that, if we were not exactly friends, at least Thor did not act as though I were not there.

  Later that day I asked Thor if he had any idea where we were.

  He finished the ale at the bottom of his cup, then looked up at me with something like a smile on his face. I thought he might even laugh again. “Hafvilla,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Hafvilla. ’Tis a word in the old language,” he explained. “The Vikings used it when they found they were hopelessly lost.”

  “I think we have been heading mostly west, since the storm,” I said, attempting to be helpful.

  With a shrug he refilled his cup.

  “Is there any way we can rig up a new mast?” I asked, trying a different tack. “I mended the sail.”

  “Well, aren’t you the clever seamstress?” he responded unpleasantly.

  “Thor…”

  He shrugged again, gazing critically around the knorr. “We might fix something up – not as tall, of course, but enough to catch a little wind.”

  “If you tell me what to do… I am stronger than I look.”

  “Are you indeed?” Thor replied with a trace of scepticism, looking me up and down.

  “And I want to learn, all that you know – about sailing the knorr, how to navigate, everything…” I said in a rush.

  He was silent for a time, then he turned and stared at me, as though considering me in a new light. “You don’t fancy floating around on the sea for ever with a drunken old sot, eh? Well, maybe I will teach you. I’m not much good as a captain, am I?” he said, gesturing at his bound-up leg and arm. “And my ale supply will run out sooner or later.”

  “Sooner, I should think,” I retorted.

  “You’ll need to pay close attention. I’ll not say things twice. And I am not a patient man.”

  That was an understatement. Thor was ill mannered and ill tempered, and how much of either depended on where he was in his drinking. If he’d had too little, he was impossible; if too much, he was careless and impossible.

  Still, he managed to cram a great deal of information into a short span of time. His knowledge of the ship and of the sea was impressive, and it was obvious how much he loved it all, which made up for his gruffness. He instructed me as I repaired the steering oar and then rigged up a short mast from deck boards. He taught me about the rigging, and even explained to me the smallest details of how the knorr had been built.

  Finally he launched into the subject of navigation.

  “There are as many ways to find your way as there are sailors. Smell the different flavours of a stretch of coast, listen for the curve of the shore, taste the air,” he said to me.

  He explained how to read the stars, the sun and moon, the tides, the weather, fish and bird life, and even water temperature, colour, and texture. And then with great solemnity, he showed me how to use his highly prized leidarstein.

  Much of what he taught me had a practical simplicity to it, but taken altogether it was overwhelming, and there were times that I despaired of remembering it all.

  By the end of the first two days of Thor’s instruction, my hands were raw from handling the rigging, my back was sore, and my head ached from all I’d been trying to absorb. I recalled my previous ocean crossing – the simple, dreamlike trip through the sea, wrapped in a sealskin and carried like a baby in the mouth of a white bear. And I realized how much more complicated life is without the benefit of magic. Rubbing linseed oil into my blistered hands, I thought wistfully of how magic lets you skip over the steps of things. That is what makes it so appealing.

  But, I thought, the steps of things are where life is truly found, in doing the day-to-day tasks. Caught up in the world of enchantment as I had been at the castle, it had been the routine things I had missed most, which was why I had set up that laundry room and insisted on doing my own washing. But I had missed so much. Sitting at the table back home and peeling potatoes with my mother and sisters in a companionable silence. Feeding the chickens, their urgent feathery bodies crowding my legs, and looking up to see Neddy coming back from the fields. Going on one of my long exploring walks, having a blister come up on my heel but at the same time stumbling upon a fox den and catching a brief glimpse of a mother fox nursing a brand-new litter of kits. And though I might have wished away the blister, slowing down to favour the pain in my heel was part of how I came to see the kits.

  And I knew, without ever having been told, that the white bear would have gladly traded the comfortable magic life in the castle in exchange for a whole horde of blisters on his feet.

  Finished with the linseed oil, I took up some rigging that needed repair, and I had a memory, clear as day, of the face of the stranger who had been the white bear – and of the hopelessness in his eyes. I could not help the hot tears that smeared my vision.

  “Work too much for you, eh?” I heard Thor say.

  I quickly blinked away the tears and looked over at him, a cup of ale in his hand and a sneering look on his face. “Of course not,” I retorted.

  “A little too much sun in the eyes then?” he asked sarcastically.

  “I was remembering something,” I replied stiffly, and focused on the length of rope in my hand. “Someone.”

  There was a silence. Then, “Forgive me. ’Twas ill spoken,” came the unexpected words from Thor.

  I looked at him, amazed.

  “Why do you go to Suroy?” he suddenly asked. It was the first time he had ever asked me a question about myself.

  I looked at him and for some reason I told him the truth. I think it was because of his eyes. They reminded me, for just a moment, of Neddy’s.

  I spoke for a long, long time, telling the whole story. I expected at any moment he would interrupt me with a shout of laughter or disbelief. But he did not.

  When I came to the end, I took a deep breath, my fingers unknowingly twisting the ring on my thumb.

  Thor was silent. Then he said, “’Tis a strange tale.”

  There was a pause. “And so you go north, to make things right with this white bear. Or the man that was the white bear.”

  I nodded.

  “My grandfather said once that a white wolf spoke to him. But then, he was overfond of mead.” Thor grinned. “An appetite that runs in the family.” I did not return his smile, and his faded, too.

  “I have travelled north,” Thor said, a far look in his eyes. “Well beyond Njord. Saw a white land way off in the distance, but I had to turn back because of the ice
. If something remains of magic in the world, I believe it would lie in the far north, in the places where people cannot go.”

  We fell silent.

  Thor broke the silence at last, and it was the first time he called me by name. “Well, Rose,” he said, “once we get that sail raised, the knorr shall take you north. After all, you did save my life. And ’tis only common courtesy to take you where I said I would.”

  We both laughed then.

  In her letter Rose had sounded different. Older, I guess, her tone more serious. And it wasn’t the words of the letter but the new voice that made me feel sad, as though I’d lost the old Rose for ever.

  After Mother confessed her folly that day, she and Father had come back together. Widow Hautzig had been banished from the household, and Father set out on no more journeys.

  Once we received Rose’s letter, Father and I spent many evenings talking about what to do. Despite the few clues Rose had let fall during our conversations while she was at home, we were still no closer to knowing where the castle was, except that it lay across a body of water. Finally we decided that for the time being we would do nothing; we would trust Rose and rely on her to find her way back home to us.

  Although Mother agreed with that, she believed she must do more than just sit and wait. It was she who made the effort to find out all she could about the disappearing merchant, the one who had sold her the candle and flint. There wasn’t very much to learn, though there were rumours aplenty. There was one story going around that he had been spotted late one night by the Romsdal Fjord and, when he turned around, was seen to have no back at all, only a big hollow space where his back should have been.

  The only facts that could be pinned down were that the merchant said he came from Finnland and that he had an aversion to very warm weather, although even on the hottest days he wore long sleeves and long pants, as well as gloves made of soft leather. He made no friends and kept very much to himself. The other interesting facts that Mother told us were that the skin on his face was odd, scarred and ridged, and that he had an unusual voice, rough and deep, as though he had a perpetual sore throat or cough.