West of the Moon (21 page)

I tip the cup of water to her lips, and she sips a little.

The old woman stirs and places a cool damp cloth on Greta's forehead. She's familiar now, somehow.

“Do I know you?” I ask.

And the crone says, “I'll not say no.” Her eyes are wet stones set in her wrinkled face. At next glance they are as deep and dark as pools. I catch a glimpse of myself in them. Past the reflection, the well is deep.

“I visited your house when you were small, years before this one”—she points to Greta—“was born.”

It comes to me
: the scrape of chairs on the floor of the house, and the rustle of skirts. Coffee being poured into cups; the cups
placed on the table. It might have been an ordinary day but for the women's voices: hushed and intent.

Behind the voices, the distant lowing of cows, the cry of a rooster, and inside the house, a child's ceaseless wailing. And the old woman sitting at the hearth, heating something over the fire.

“
Your mother said she had done everything right,” Mor Kloster tells me now. “Or at least as right as she could do. ‘Not a thing forgotten, back when you and your twin were newborns,' said she. She put a pair of sheep shears in the cradles, consecrated the babes' wash water, made the sign of the cross. She never neglected to say ‘In Jesus's name,' not once in the important places.

“‘See you there?' said your mama, and pointed to the lintel above the door where she had stuck a knife into the wooden beam. ‘There's steel,' she said. But then there'd been the question of silver, and she only had but the one brooch. She could only pin it on one of the babes' dresses, couldn't she?”

The old woman looks up at me. “She had to choose, you see. Oh, both babes were healthy to start—that's the way it is. But then something changes. Somewhere along the way a healthy babe turns into a monstrous thing.

“‘Why?' your mother asked, pointing to the healthy toddler. ‘Why has this one all the health? Oh, she's as sturdy as a fjord pony,' she said, ‘while the other child lies in bed day and night howling till its face is purple as a turnip. And look at it!'

“The children were toddlers by the time I was called in, and one of them was a strange one, all right, with soft bones and nothing for joints but jelly. Her legs bowed like a sheep's, her head thick as a cabbage. And there she lay, not up and running about but whimpering and wailing by turns.”

I remember now. I remember a voice coming from a dark corner. “I shouldn't wonder,” the voice addressed Mama, “if the
huldrefolk,
seeing you have more babies than you can care for”—here the woman in the corner had lowered her voice to a terrible low whisper—“if they didn't steal your child and leave one of their own behind.”

“Oh, that was a woman without a heart in her body,” Mor Kloster says. “I shot her a dark look, you can be sure, but she just sat with her eyes on her knitting. And your mama turned away, biting her lip. I melted the lead over the fire. Good lead, it was, too, scraped from church windows at the seam of the year.”

I remember watching as the old woman lifted the beaker from the fire and carried it to the little bed, then poured the melted lead, hissing and sputtering, into a waiting bowl of water, which she held over the child's head. “I heal you in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for nine kinds of
svekk
and nine kinds of English disease. Peace be with you.
I Jesu navn,
amen,” the old woman had prayed then, staring into the bowl.

Or perhaps she has said that just now.

The ship pitches suddenly, and I worry that the hot lead will spill on Greta, then realize where I am: in the gloom of between decks, and that same old woman, older now, of course, reaches over Greta to pat my hand.

“It's so long ago now, I can't remember how it all turned out,” she says. “Which one of the babes were you?”

I cannot clearly see myself. Was I the one whimpering in the bed? Or was I the one toddling about the room? The healthy one or the sickly one? The human one or the changeling?

“Your mama had her hands full with two, especially since one was sickly,” Mor tells me as she squeezes a little water from a cloth into Greta's mouth. “So your papa took the healthy one with him when he could.”

Now I remember that Papa would plunk me in a puddle of sunshine while he went about his work.

“Somehow,” Mor Kloster says, “that one got pinker and stronger while the other babe at home grew puffy and weak. Your mama got the blame; it was said she did this or that wrong. Your aunt went so far as to claim that the
huldrefolk
had exchanged the child for one of their own. Something should be done about it, she'd said.”

And Mama had done something.

G
reta coughs weakly and says, “Tell me how to get there, big sister, to Soria Moria, so I can find you.”

“There is a path,” I begin again, “along a mountainside.” As I tell her, I remember that I had to walk, but Mama carried the other child.

“We walk along, walk along,” I tell Greta, “with the valley below and the mountains rising on each side.”

It had been a gloomy day.
“Most likely it is a gloomy day,” I say, “as dark outside as it is in this dingy place.”
The mountains were shrouded in dark and shifting shadows: the hills rolling away, smudges of purple, their rocky edges black under the glowering sky. But across the dale, on the mountainside, the sun was shining in one spot and nowhere else. And that one spot was lit as if made of gold, a brilliant sparkling patch of light.

“Do you see it, my girls?” Mama had said. “That's where we're going. It is Soria Moria, where everything is as good as good can be and there is so much joy, there is no end to it.”

And I guess I have just said it myself, for now Greta's eyes close as if satisfied.

She sleeps; she drifts; she swims away from me.

“Don't go!” I whisper. “Don't leave me behind.”

So that's how it was that day long ago. There were three of us who went to Soria Moria, but only two came back.

Astri's Dream

lost one sister, I realize now. I cannot,
will
not, lose another. I'll do anything—anything!—to save Greta.

But things begin to spin. Everything turns and turns as if I am dancing with the Halling boy, everything whirling. Then all goes dark.

When I open my eyes again, there is a revolving swirl of colors, people's faces; the familiar look of the bottom of the upper bunk passes by. I squeeze my eyes shut against it all, but behind my closed eyes is a rush of color and everything spinning, even though I know I am lying still. I hear distant voices, the muttering of incantations, the whisper of fabric, the milkmaids calling the cows from a distant hillside. The smell is the worst of it, though—the horrible stench of trolls, trolls with more heads of greasy hair than I can count.

The bed starts to sink, and down it goes, through the decking to the lower hold, through the bottom of the ship, through water, then through fire, and Astri finds herself back in Norway, running along a grassy hillside. Wreaths of mist cling to the mountains while little brooks rush and sing down the slopes. Astri runs and runs, startling birds that swoop and fly overhead, past a herd of reindeer who raise
their heads as she passes. One bolts, and the entire herd runs with her, running and running to Soria Moria.

Finally, she comes to a castle where she walks through the dim halls, with torches glimmering and sooty shadows on the walls. A whirring sound draws her toward a chamber, but when she tries to go in, she finds it locked. She takes the key from around her neck and unlocks the door. On one wall hangs a great, gleaming sword, and next to it, a leather drinking flask. Beneath it, a girl sits spinning golden thread. The girl turns toward her, and at first Astri thinks it is her own self she confronts, as if in a mirror. But then she recognizes that it is not herself but her twin, a silver brooch glimmering on her dress. In the same instant, she realizes it is Spinning Girl.

They stare at each other for a long moment, and the girl says nothing, but still Astri hears her words. “You'd best get out of here as fast as you can, for soon the troll will be home. And he is a three-headed monster.”

“I'll stay here and fight the troll,” Astri says, catching the rancid, old-man smell of the troll and his many greasy heads. “I don't care if he has twelve heads! I'll chop them all off! Just let me have a drink from that flask.”

“You want his flask?” the girl asks. “I'll let you have it on one condition: that you leave right away.”

“But then I can't save you,” Astri says.

“I can take care of the troll myself,” says the girl. “Now, listen to me. Outside this castle there is a mountain. You will have to climb
that mountain to get to the castle that lies east of the sun and west of the moon.”

So Astri slings the strap of the flask over her shoulder, casts one glance at Spinning Girl, and out she goes. The mountainside is as steep as a wall, and so high and so wide that no end could she see. Nonetheless, Astri starts up the steep rock with the flask slung over her shoulder.

Midway up, she comes to a small ledge where a man sits.

“Don't you want to stop and share a drink out of that flask you're carrying?” says the man.

“What sort of man are you, and from whence do you come?” Astri asks.

“I am your Father from heaven,” the man says.

“Oh, no,” Astri says. “I will not drink with you, for what I know of fathers and their like is abandonment, abuse, and neglect. Oh, maybe you're not like the rest, but I'll not drink with you all the same.” And on she climbs.

After a time, she comes to another ledge, where another man sits and asks her the same question. This time the man claims to be the devil, come from hell.

“I'll not drink with
you
!” Astri says. “I've had enough dealings with you already.”

Off she sets again, until she comes to another ledge, where there sits a man in a slouch hat. He seems familiar, and she asks, “Do I know you?”

“You've had dealings with me,” says the man. “They call me Death.”

“You, I'll drink with,” Astri says, climbing onto the ledge. She hands him the flask. “Because I have some questions. First of all, I want to know what you plan to do about my little sister.”

Death takes a long drink, while Astri goes on. “I understand that people can't go on living forever,” she says, taking the flask from him. “But tell me, what's the use of taking a little child who's not been on earth long enough to harm a single soul and is so full of goodness she'd have spread it around her like flour from a torn sack on a windy day?”