West of the Moon (2 page)

White Bear King Valemon

he fire hisses, then snaps, and the dog looks up from his place on the hearth. His hackles rise; a low growl escapes him. Aunt looks up from her knitting. A hush falls on the room—that curious feeling of something-about-to-happen seizes us. As for my cousins, the eldest holds her needle in midair; the middle one falls quiet, taking her hands away from the loom and setting them in her lap. The twins are silent, for once.

And me? Somewhere deep within me, my heart pounds, distant as an echo, as if it is already far away, in another place and another time.

T
here's a story I know about a white bear who came and took the youngest daughter away with him, promising the family everything they wanted and more, if the father would only let him take her. In the story, the family was sitting in their house when something passed by outside the window. Hands to their hearts, they all gasped. Pressed up against the window was the face of a bear—a white bear—his wet nose smearing the glass, his eyes searching the room. As he moved past, it was as if a splotch of sunlight momentarily penetrated the gloom.

That is
that
story. In
my
story I am sitting in the house with my aunt and uncle and cousins when something passes by outside the window. In the twilight it is just a dark shape. The room dims as the shadow goes by, and even after it passes, the darkness lingers, as if the sun has gone for good.

Aunt sets her knitting in her lap. She tries not to smile, holding her lips firm, but the smile makes its way to her forehead, and her eyebrows twitch with satisfaction.

My stomach works its way into a knot; my breath catches halfway down my throat.

A sharp knock on the door makes us all jump. Aunt gets up, smooths her skirt, and crosses to open it. My cousins glance at me, then away when I return their look. Greta isn't here. She must be hiding, which is just as well.

The man has to stoop to come in the low doorway, then, when inside, unfolds himself, but something makes him seem still stooped. It's a hump on his back. Even standing up straight it's there, like a rump roast oddly perched on one shoulder. I can't stop staring at it. He's chesty like an old goat, and wiry everywhere else. He's got the billy goat's scraggly beard and mean little eyes like black buttons. As ill-mannered as a goat, too, for he doesn't bother to take off his hat.

He squints around the room with his glittery eyes without saying
“God dag”
or
“Takk for sist.”
No, his jaw works away at his cud of tobacco, and when he finally opens his mouth
to reveal his stained teeth, it's to bleat out, “Which is the girl, then?”

His beady eyes gleam as they drift over pretty Helga's curves, glint as they take in Katinka's blonde braids, almost sparkle when they behold Flicka's ruddy cheeks. But when Aunt points to me, he turns his squint on me and his eyes turn flat and dark. “Well, I hope she can work,” he grunts.

“Aye,” says Aunt. “She's as hearty as a horse.”

“Her name?”

“Astri.”

“How old?”

“Thirteen. Fourteen by summer.”

“Not a handful, I hope,” he says. “I don't care for trouble in a girl. Don't care for it!” This he proclaims with a shake of his shaggy head and a stamp of his walking stick.

“She'll be no trouble to you, Mr. Svaalberd,” Aunt lies. “Get your things, Astri.”

My limbs are so numb I can barely climb the ladder into the loft. There is Greta, sitting on the lump of my straw mattress, her face wet with tears.

“Little sister,” I say softly, and we embrace. I'd been able to keep from crying till now, when I hear her trembling intake of breath. “Greta,” I whisper, “stop crying. Don't make me cry. I can't show Mr. Goat any weakness. You show a billy goat you're afraid of him, and he'll be lording it over you day and night.”

Greta stops sniffling and takes my hands. “Big sister,” she says, “you must be stronger—and meaner—than he is!”

“Aye, that's so,” I say. “I shall be.” I dry her tears with my apron and swipe at my own, too.

Her tiny hands press something into mine, something heavy, wrapped with a child's clumsiness in a piece of cloth. “You take this, Astri,” she says.

I unwrap it to see our mother's silver brooch. “Keep it,” Greta whispers. “Aunt will take it away if she finds out about it, you know.”

I nod. Greta is already so wise for such a tiny thing. Too wise, maybe.

“Little sister,” I tell her, holding my voice steady, “Papa will send for us, and then we'll go to America to join him.”

Greta drops her head and nods. She doesn't want me to see she's crying, but her shoulders are shaking.

“Astri!” Aunt yells up the stairs. “Don't dawdle!”

I kiss the top of Greta's head and place my hand on her face for just a moment—all I dare, or risk a broken heart.

Down the ladder I go to stand by the door, my bundle under my arm. I can't help but notice there are now two shiny coins glinting on the table, along with a large, lumpy package. My cousins are eyeing the coins with the same intensity that the dog is sniffing the package. Now I know how much I'm worth: not as much as Jesus, who I'm told was sold for thirty pieces
of silver. I am worth two silver coins and a haunch of goat.

Uncle comes and tucks a wisp of hair behind my ear, almost tenderly. “I'm sorry, Astri,” he says. “It can't be helped.”

That's all there is for a good-bye, and then out the door I go.

I
n the story, the young maid climbed upon the white bear's back, and he said, “Are you afraid?”

No, she wasn't.

“Have you ever sat softer or seen clearer?” the white bear asked.

“No, never!” said she.

Well. That is a story and this is my real life, and instead of White Bear King Valemon, I've got Old Mr. Goat Svaalberd. And instead of “Sit on my back,” he says “Carry my bag,” and on we troop through the darkening woods, the goatman in front and me behind, under the weight of his rucksack and my own small bundle of belongings. The only thing white is the snow—falling from the sky in flakes as big as mittens. Strange for it to be snowing already, while leaves are still on the trees. It heaps up on them, making the branches droop, and piles up on the goatman's hump until it looks like a small snowy mountain growing out of his back.

“Aren't you afraid of the trolls who come out at night?” he says.

“I'm not afraid,” I tell him, though it's a lie. It's twilight; the sun has slipped behind the mountains, and the shadows begin to dissolve into darkness. The time of day when honest, churchgoing people go home to bed.

He breaks off a rowan twig and gives it to me. “Tuck that into your dress,” says he, “for protection.”

I stumble along behind the goatman, trying to memorize every boulder and tree, every bend in the trail so I can find my way back. But evening is ending and the full night is coming on. We leave a dotted line of footprints behind us, which are rapidly filled in with snow. By morning there won't be a trace of us left behind.

W
hen the youngest daughter arrived at the bear's house, it was a castle she found, with many rooms all lit up, rooms gleaming with gold and silver, a table already laid, everything as grand as grand could be. Anything she wanted, she just rang a little silver bell, and there it was.

Not so for me, for when I come to the lair of Mr. Goat, it is a hovel, and filthy inside. The walls are soot-covered, and the fireplace so full of cinders that every time the door opens or shuts, ashes and smoke puff out into the room, enough to make you choke. A hard lump—ash, I suppose—settles in my throat.

The goatman's dog—Rolf, his name is—plunks himself down on the hearth and trains his yellow eyes on me.

Old Goatbeard lights a smoky fire in the fireplace and dumps a cold, greasy hunk of mutton on the table. Then he saws off the heel of a loaf of bread with a big, wide-bladed knife—the only thing shiny in the whole place, polished clean by the bread it slices.

When I scowl at the bread, he says, “Oh, a princess, are we? I suppose you're accustomed to pork roast and applesauce every night.”

I say no, for of course we never had any such thing and most of the time no mutton, either, but at least our table was clean and what bread we had wasn't gray with ash and covered with sooty fingerprints.

With the last bit of bread, I swallow the lump that's been stuck in my throat. It slides down and lodges in my chest, where it stays, a smooth, cold stone pressed next to my heart.

Now it is time to sleep, and the goatman shows me my little bed in the corner.

Never trust a billy goat, Astri!

I know it, and so when Svaalberd goes outside to the privy, I sneak quietly to the table and take the heavy knife with the gleaming blade. Lacking the silken pillows with gold fringe that the girl got at King Valemon's castle, I tuck my own little bundle under my head. And under the bundle I slide the knife.

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