West of the Moon (5 page)

But it isn't this that makes me stare. It's that, in the midst of all this, there is a spinning wheel purring away, and at the spinning wheel sits a girl. Or what looks like a girl, all surrounded by the glow of candlelight.

“Hei!”
I say.

She looks up at me but says nothing.

“Who are you?” I ask.

No answer.

“What's your name?”

Still no answer.

“How long have you been sitting here, spinning?”

Nothing.

“Are you deaf?” I ask. “DEAF?” I shout.

No answer.

“Maybe you're just rude!”

No response.

A strange-looking creature she is: small but soft and round as rising bread dough, and her hands like white sweet rolls, spinning wool. How old might she be? She looks on the one hand like a child, on the other like a very old woman. She's a strange one, so silent and unspeaking, with her wide gray eyes and her soft face.

She knows how to spin, there's no denying that. On the floor to one side of her is a heap of wool, and on the other side is a pile of well-spun yarn, smooth and perfect, all neatly looped into skeins.

“That's very fine yarn you've made,” I tell her.

Maybe there's the hint of a smile, although it might be just the way the candlelight flickers along her face.

Deep into the night she sits and spins, her wheel purring like a contented cat. While she spins yarn, I spin yarns. I tell her stories of Soria Moria, and the castle that lies east of the sun and west of the moon.

I tell her how I made the same mistake as the girl in the story who dropped tallow on the bear-prince's shirt. “Do you know that story?” I ask the spinning girl. “And how the prince woke and said, ‘What have you done? Now you have made us both unhappy forever. If you had only held out one year I should have been saved. I have been bewitched to be a bear by day and a man by night. But now all is over between us, and I must go to the castle that lies east of the sun and west of the moon, where I will have to marry the troll princess with a nose three ells long.'”

I tell the spinning girl that I tried the same thing with the candle, and everything happened just like in the story, except that it turns out old Goatbeard is just as goaty and trollish in sleep as he is in daylight. “And it begins to seem that you and I are princesses,” I tell her, “held captive by the old troll himself!” I am being more than nice to call her a princess, for she looks nothing at all like any princess you might imagine. But then neither do I, I suppose.

“In the stories,” I go on, “someone always comes to rescue the princesses. A prince or even a simple boy in raggedy clothes with a spot of soot on his nose. And so shall someone rescue us, I shouldn't wonder.”

That's what I tell her, but as her wheel whirs, my mind whirs along with it, and soon I've run out of golden thread
with which to spin my pretty stories and I'm left with just the thin thread of truth. And that wiry, rough little thread tells me that if anyone is going to do any rescuing from this place, it's going to have to be me.

Winter

omething is different. As soon as I open my eyes, I can tell. The tiny square of light coming in the one grubby window has changed; it isn't yellow-gold anymore. This light is a pale gray-blue, like milk without the cream mixed in. I know before I look outside: It has snowed.

The door bangs open, and I hear the stomp of the goatman's boots, then catch the whiff of the cold outdoors, of snow wetting down his woolen jacket.

“Get up, you lazy wench. The work doesn't end because it snows. The goats need feeding.”

I get up and pull on the clothes and shoes he tosses me, then stomp out to the goat shed.

It must have snowed all night long; it's knee-deep and still coming down. I'm trudging through it when I notice Svaalberd leading Snowflake right into the house.

“What kind of madness is this? Girls sleep in the storehouse while the goats go in the house?” I ask.

“She's about to give birth, and I don't want to risk the kid freezing outside,” he says. “Fetch some straw and bring it in here.”

I retrieve some straw, bring it in, and strew it around.

“Who's that girl in the storehouse?” I ask him as he pats Snowflake's heavy belly.

“This is what comes of her getting out when she shouldn't!” he exclaims.

“Who?”

“Snowflake!”

“I'm asking of the
girl
. Who is she?”

“She didn't say anything to you, I don't suppose?” the goatman asks me.

“Why?” I ask back.

“Well, did she?” His eyes shift here and there while he pretends to busy himself with Snowflake.

“You must know yourself if she talks or doesn't,” I say.

“Nary a word to me,” he says.

“Nor to me,” say I.

He nods, pleased, and gives Snowflake a satisfied smack.

“Well?” I persist. “What about her?”

“She'll be having twins, I shouldn't doubt.”

“The girl?”

“No, Snowflake!” he says.

“I'm asking of the girl,” I remind him.

“Found her when she was just a babe, crawling about on all fours out in the wild, all alone. Seems her people just threw her away. Thought she was a changeling, most like,” he says.

Changeling! A sudden chill passes through my sweater and makes me shiver.

“Left for the trolls to take, I shouldn't wonder. But it seems even the trolls didn't want her!” He laughs at this, and then goes on. “So I took her. Turned out she wasn't much of a worker. Too slow to be much good at anything. But once she found spinning, well! When it comes to spinning, there's not her like to be found.”

“Is she happy at that work, then?” I ask.

“Why, if she isn't, she ought to be!” is his answer. “She's got it better than she should.”

Snowflake bleats and cries. She tries to lie down, then stands, then tries to lie down again. Oh, but Svaalberd is all gentleness, speaking kindnesses to her like he never has to me.

“Good girl,” he says, as she begins to bear down, pushing and bleating by turns. She seems to be having a time of it, but after a bit something starts to appear.

“There's a leg,” I say.

The goatman turns to me and says, “Why do you stand there, useless? Build up the fire some!”

I throw more wood on the fire, while peppering him with questions about the spinning girl. He says that the girl never uttered a sound, on account of her mother getting too close to an elder tree before she was born, he reckons.

“Why do you keep her locked up like that?” I ask.

“For her own safety, that's why. She might wander off and get lost! She could get hurt.”

The baby goat lands with a plop on the straw, and Svaalberd says, proud as a papa, “There's the kid! A doe.”

Snowflake turns around and starts in cleaning up the tiny creature, sweet as can be, with its floppy ears too big for the rest of it.

“Anyway, she's got strange powers, that one,” the goatman says.

“Snowflake?” I ask, over her cries. She's bleating and pushing again.

“No, the girl,” says the goatman. “You don't want her too near the does' shed, or they may stop giving milk. And you don't see me shaving, do you? No, you don't. For should the girl get hold of my whiskers, she could make a potion with them and cast a spell to weaken and sicken me.”

I look at his scraggly beard and think, I would not want to touch those whiskers, even if I could make a potion out of them.

“Do you really believe that?” I say. “The parson says we're not to hold to such things—superstitions and the like. And when it comes to matters of health, we should put our faith in the doctor.”

“Doctor!” Svaalberd scoffs. “When have you ever seen one of those in these parts?” Just as he says this, out comes another kid,
plop!
onto the straw.

“Twins, it is,” Svaalberd exclaims, then, “Ohhh …” His tone changes, and I look up from my bellows work, for the fire seems all smoke and nothing else today.

He
tsk
s and clucks and shakes his shaggy head. “Take this one out, and put it in the snow.”

I study the second kid, small as a kitten and unsteady. He rocks on his little pegs trying to stand, and his funny ears flop from side to side. “He isn't dead,” I say. “And look: Snowflake is cleaning him up, too. She's not rejected him.”

“He'll never grow up right,” Svaalberd says. “So there's no point in feeding him.”

“It's only his leg is a little funny,” I suggest.

“Nay,” the goatman says. “Best to get it over now.”

“But—” I start.

“Maybe you'd like to go fetch the
doctor
!” he snaps and shows me the back of his hand. “Now take him out.”

“Do it yourself,” I tell him, turning back to poke at the fire. “I don't care if you slap me. I won't do it.”

When I look over my shoulder, there is just the one kid, and Snowflake staring at the door. If I didn't like old Goatbeard before, now where he is concerned, my heart has hardened into black coal.

The Ash Lad

o our life goes on. Snowflake and her kid in the house with Svaalberd, and me in the storehouse with Spinning Girl. Luckily there's a stove in there. So I've got both stove and fireplace for which to chop kindling, to carry wood, to stoke and to tend.

At first, I keep my eye on the girl, wondering if she's human or what. Could she be a
hulder
-maid—one of the invisibles, as Svaalberd said? Her work seems to go from dusk until dawn, as they say the
huldrefolks'
does.

“Who are you?” I ask her, and “From whence do you come?” and even “Are you a human girl, or what?”

What
is
it, I wonder, that makes us human?

“Turn around one time,” I tell her, and she does. There's no tail poking out from under her skirt. She's not hollowed out from behind, either, as they say
huldre
-maids are.