West of the Moon (23 page)

But what can I do? Our food stores are gone. What little money we had is gone. We really have nothing at all. I know
that it's best if she goes with the blacksmith and I go off to the parsonage.

“It won't be forever,” Greta says after everyone has drifted away.

“I know,” I say, and try to smile, but like the troll caught out in the daylight, I feel myself turning to stone.

D
ays pass while Greta stays in bed, gathering strength. As for me, I'm strong enough to go above decks, where I sit at my spot against the mizzenmast. It is so still today that I have watched as the ship went all the way around in a circle and is now on its second pass. Not the slightest breath of wind comes through the air.

Just like me: out of wind, as listless as these drooping sails.

I should be happy, I suppose. Everything has worked out. I have accepted the parson's wife's offer. Now Greta has a home, too. She and I won't be all that far from each other, as it turns out, so we'll be able to see each other now and again. I remember the parson's wife saying how she was oddly never happy when she was supposed to be, and I think, well, maybe we
are
alike. Because although I suppose I should be, I'm not happy.

“It's the remnants of the illness,” Mor says, but I am not so sure about that. I feel that I am made of nothing but knots and tangles, hard stones, steel plates, and icy cold water. That's all there is, and when I am not having to press the weight of all
that against something difficult, there isn't much of me.

I look out at the ocean, stretching in all directions like the marble floors of Soria Moria castle. The ship is like the forgotten toy of a giant's child, carelessly left behind.

I stare at that marble ocean and say, “I could walk on that, I don't doubt.”

A voice behind me says, “No you couldn't.” I turn to see Bjørn, who says, “Come with me.”

“What do you want?”

“I don't want anything,” he says. “Mor Kloster sent me to fetch you. She wants your help.”

“Help with what?”

“There's a baby wants birthing.”

“I don't know anything about that,” I tell him.

“Mor Kloster says you are the one she needs,” Bjørn insists.

“There are others better suited to that sort of task,” I sniff.

“Are you afraid?” he asks.

I look at him, and he returns my gaze, steady. “I'm not afraid,” I say and hoist myself up, then follow him into the dim recesses belowdecks.

“She's in there,” Bjørn says, pointing.

Someone has hung quilts around the bed for privacy, but they can't keep out the screams. My hand goes to my chest, where my fingers find the key that hangs there. I clutch it with
one hand while pushing open the drapes with the other.

Inside the cloth walls it's even darker and warmer, and it doesn't smell too sweet, either. The mother-to-be is writhing on the bed, her pale face glistening with sweat, her hair as wet as if a bucket of water had been poured over it. Her eyes flick from face to face, begging for help. They lock on mine just as Mor grabs my arm and pulls me in.

“I can't help you,” I say.

The old crone holds up her knotted, swollen hands. Then she takes mine and holds them in front of my face.

“Look at those fine hands, my girl. Small and smooth and deft. Those hands our good Lord gave you. Shouldn't you be making use of them?”

“I
have
made use of them,” I mumble.

“
Good
use, then,” the old woman says, catching my eyes with hers.

She knows all, I see.

“There are things that need doing that I cannot do, but for which you are well-suited—” She goes on talking, but I stop listening, for who should be sitting at the foot of the bunk but the old gentleman in the hat: Death.

He shoots me a dark look, and I bolt for the curtain. But Mor Kloster is fast for an old lady, and she grabs me before I can get out.

She explains what she wants me to do as she plunges my
hands into a bowl of warm water and hands me a slip of soap. The baby is going to come out feet first, she tells me, handing me a towel to dry my hands, and is going to need some help. “Quickly,” she adds.

Well. I've done other hard things, haven't I? And wasn't I just wishing for something difficult to have to press my weight against?

So I find myself kneeling on the bed, trying to get in some better position, if there is such a thing, for this task. I give Death a wary glance, and he raises an eyebrow at me.

“Water …” the woman on the bed whispers, and I remember Mama whispering in the same harsh-throated way. I was only five when Mama gave birth to Greta. Papa was out in the forest, and it was just Mama and me at home.

I brought her a cup of water, then stood with my fingers in my mouth watching for a while. She was suffering, I could see that. Her eyes squeezed shut against the pain, her hair matted, her skin clammy. Mama didn't seem like my smooth-faced mother anymore, the mother who took care of me, sang lullabies, and kissed my bruises.

“Astri,” Mama said, “I need you to go get help. Go get Mor Kloster. You know how to get there. We've been there together. Go down the path, through the pasture, keep straight on it, over the little bridge, stay on the path through the forest, and …” She waved her hand for me to go.

I ran out of the house and down the path. I knew the old crone who had come to our house in her dark skirts and hushed voice. She was a scary old woman. Maybe a witch! She smelled of camphor, and her eyes were black as a mink's.

My steps slowed.

But then I thought of Mama with her damp skin, her tangled hair, her stifled cries. She thought the troll
kone
could help her, and so maybe I should fetch her as Mama had asked.

The legs and baby's bottom have emerged, and Mor Kloster tells me that the babe's arms need to be released from their crossed position before the baby can be fully born. I am supposed to reach inside and do this.

I feel my hands being guided, as Mor whispers in my ear. “Very fine,” she says.

The mother groans.

“Don't let her move,” Mor Kloster says, and the other women place their hands firmly on the woman's shoulders and legs.

I scampered down the path, through the forest, and out into the open heath. It seemed to me that after the old woman had been to our house the first time, everything had changed. Mama stopped singing. She cried sometimes when she thought no one was listening. She stared out windows. And she had stopped loving me.

I plopped down in the heather to think. After a moment I lay down and looked up at the clouds moving across the sky in a regal
parade. There was the King of the Clouds, and there the Queen. Next came the princesses, a dozen of them, in their fluffy pink dresses. For a while I lay like this, watching the clouds float by. But then I began to feel that perhaps the ground was moving and the clouds were standing still. The more I thought about it, the more that seemed to be how it was, and pretty soon I felt the earth speeding along so fast I had to hang on for dear life. I stretched out my arms and clung to the grass and stones under my fingers.

It made me dizzy, thinking how fast the earth was hurtling along, and where were we going? I wondered, closing my eyes.

After a while of the world spinning like this, I heard a clucking sound, and I opened my eyes. There, standing over me, blocking the clouds from view, was the old troll hag herself!

“Here's a tender little mushroom, ready for picking!” the old crone said.

I scrambled up. “I'm not a mushroom!” I said. “I'm a girl.”

“A little girl, are you?” said the woman. “What are you doing out here all by yourself, then? Where's your mama?”

Mama! I was filled with shame when I remembered my mother at home, suffering. Somehow I had lain down in the grass and watched the clouds go by instead of fetching the old lady as I had been told. “Mama wants you to come,” I said. “Hurry!”

“There's trouble?”

I nodded.

“Why didn't you come for me right away? Why was it I found you here, lying in the meadow, gazing at the sky?”

“I was afraid …”

The old woman took my hand in her own and set off down the path.

“It can be a fearful thing to meet your destiny.”

Did she say that then, or is she saying that now? I wonder, as with my fingers I move the tiny arms across the babe's chest.

“Well done,” Mor Kloster whispers in my ear. “Now, gently… gently…”

In the next push the child is delivered, slippery and red-faced and very much alive. And for a moment, I am back in the cotter's hut with Mama, and Greta is delivered in the same way, all shiny and goopy and screaming her head off. I remember this, and that there was so much joy there was no end to it. Except it did end, quickly and harshly, for Mama died then, not long after. And that was when a cloud passed over the sun, casting a dark shadow that never moved away.

“Hand the child to me,” says Mor.

I realize I am holding the infant; the pulse and thrum of its life courses through my hands and into my whole self. Or perhaps that's me, trembling.

“Now you have fulfilled your part of the bargain,” Mor Kloster says to me.

“Bargain?”

“You have delivered to me your first born. No doubt you will help birth many more in your years.” The old woman says this as she is inspecting the babe. Then she glances up, and our eyes meet. She gives me a little nod, and the other ladies in the makeshift room laugh.

“'Tis her first born, that's so!” one says, and they are all a-chatter about it and wasn't that a clever thing, and hadn't they been wondering how it was going to turn out after all?

Mor instructs me how to swaddle the infant, placing the child's arms across his chest and wrapping the band around the babe. I'm to wind it in a special way and tie the band so it forms a cross. But I'm trembling so much I can't do it.

“Steady … steady,” Mor says, her words themselves steadying me. And the trembling starts to feel like … well, like thrumming. Like the whirring of Spinning Girl's wheel. It seems to shake loose the knots and knobby bits and stones and steel inside me. All those hard bits soften and dissolve a little, like lead in a beaker, slowly melting over a warm fire. It's scary and daunting, but exciting, too. Is this how it feels to meet your destiny? I wonder.

“Let us say together the Lord's Prayer,” says one of the women.

I bow my head and part my lips, and then I remember! Death is there, just waiting for me to utter the words of
the prayer. If I say it, he'll have me. So, as the first words are spoken, I pass the babe to his mother, duck outside the curtained walls, and gulp down some air. My heart buzzes with the words, but not a sound escapes my lips.

When the women bustle off to make “bed food” for the new mother, I step back into the chamber. I glance at the place where Death sat, but he has gone. On to the next soul, I suppose. Or perhaps he was never there at all.

Mor hands me the Black Book. “Here is your book,” she says.

I back away.

“It's just a book,” she says. “You might find some useful thing in it, now and again. There are cures there, but there's plenty of rubbish, too.”

“How do you know which is which?” I ask her.

“That comes from practice. And from using this”—she points to her head—“which you must do all your life and with every single thing you hear and read. What are the true things, and what are not? What is good, and what is rubbish? Everything you encounter in life, everything you read, you have to use your own noggin, my girl.”

“Well,” I tell her, “it doesn't matter, since I don't know how to read.”

“You'll learn,” she says. “And since you're going to America, you'll also need to learn to read English.” She says this
matter-of-factly, as if she is telling me I'll need to gather eggs from the nest if we're to have breakfast.

“I can't learn all that!” I protest. “It's too hard. I haven't the wits for it.”

She puts one hand on her hip and gives me a good looking-at. “Child,” she says, with a shake of her head, “if there's one thing you don't lack, it's wits. You'll learn to read, and you'll start right now, because there's a lot of catching up to do.” She escorts me out of the bedchamber and then shoves me toward Bjørn, who is standing there with a book under his arm.

“If you like, Margit, I will help you …” He trails off when he sees my scowl, then takes a step back. “I remember how we met!” he says suddenly. “You're the girl—that's the same scowl—” And he starts laughing, which, of course, makes me scowl even harder.

Then I hear Greta's voice saying, “Why don't you show the goodness in you? You're as full of it as a hive is of honey.” Do I have goodness inside me? For the first time in ever so long, I think that I might.