West of the Moon (8 page)

I look at the girl, her gray eyes suddenly lit with fear, and push her toward the board that leads to freedom. Behind me, the dog woofs a cheery greeting at me.

“Go away, Rolf!” I growl.

But he snuffles around outside the stall door, panting and whining, and now yelping, and that'll raise the master! My shushing is to no avail. A punch in the snout would just set him to howling.

I could take out the knife and silence the dog with a lunging stab, make the barking stop. Once the dog was still, I could cover it with straw. It would take Mr. Goat some time, looking all over. Time enough for me to slip out under the broken board. I should do it if I'm going to. I should do it now.

But I can't. Instead, I pull the sausages out of the gunnysack and shove them under the door. The dog drags them away, disappearing into a corner.

But it's too late, isn't it? The goatman is already in the shed. His footsteps grow closer.

The Ring of Keys

scoot to the wall, pulling the girl with me. Gingerly, I raise the busted board and push her through. Not so easy, as she is round and the opening is square. But there, now she's out, and it's my turn. My head is out; I smell the spring air!

But, ah! A hand clamps around my leg. Out of the corner of my eye I see the girl waddling away into the forest while Svaalberd drags me, kicking and wiggling, out of the shed and into the house. I get plunked in a chair, and the sack is overturned and all the contents roll and clatter onto the kitchen table. The cheese and bits of broken flatbread and old potatoes, and of course the coins come out,
clinkity clink
, and the knife clunks out, and my own little bundle falls out and comes undone, and finally, even Mama's brooch lands with a polite little clatter on the tabletop.

Mr. Goat looks up at me. The corner of one eye twitches, and the vein in his neck pulses. “I see what kind of plotting you've been up to when you were pretending to work.” He grunts and spits as he drags the unlocked chest over to the table. “Your people led me to believe that in spite of all, you were a good girl,
a trustworthy girl, and here I find you stealing from the master and about to run away.” He
tsk-tsk
s and runs his tongue along his snaggleteeth.

All the while, he's pinching up the coins and popping them into the box. I follow his eyes as they dart to the brooch. They gleam, as if to say, “Now there's a pretty bit of finery!”

When I see his hand inching toward it, his fingers reaching for it, my heart leaps into my mouth, and the knife leaps into my hand. My hand rises up over my head, and in one unflinching moment, the heavy blade comes down—down upon the goatman's hands—and when the blade is raised, two of his fingers are gone.

Let me tell you, old Goatbeard is none too happy about it. He hops up and screams, staring wild-eyed at his hand, at the blood pumping out.

I hop up, too; the wooden box is opened, and everything he's tossed into it seems to leap up and fling itself back into the gunnysack: every coin, every bit of food, every crumb on the table. Out of the expanding pool of blood, I pluck my mother's brooch. The fingers I leave behind.

“Stand still, blood!” the man chants, speaking to his bloody stumps. “I bid you stop as surely as one is forbidden heaven's door …”

I know where he gets all his spells and magic. If I had the book he's got—though most likely it was his wife's book to
start, and it was she who taught him all these charms—if I had that book, I might well have all that magic myself. Although, by the look of it, his blood-stopping charm isn't working. Still, he chants on, “… stand still, blood, not one drop more. In the name of three…”

Back to the chest I go and reach down under the Bible and the papers, saying to myself, “Now that I've done what I've done, it hardly matters what else I may do.” I pluck that Black Book with its stained cover and thumbed and dirty pages, pluck it out of the box and take it.

The goatman notices me as if for the first time. Now he points at me with his good hand. With burning eyes and trembling finger, he says, “At the cost of your soul! Take it at the cost of your soul!”

Then out the door I dash and make straight for the birches. Maybe my nose can follow the clean, soapy scent of the yellow-haired boy who'd traveled this way.

Svaalberd howls. “I conjure you, devils in heaven and on earth, to stop the person who has stolen from me.” His curses follow me as I run and run, headed west. “Do not allow this person tranquility or rest, neither sleeping nor waking …”

If I don't hear the curse, maybe it can't hurt me?

“… sitting nor lying, walking nor standing, riding nor driving…”

D
own and down and down I run. Svaalberd's voice follows me: “Thus I throw this curse on her, that she will never have rest on this earth …”

Eventually I will come to a road. Or if not a road, a trail. Or if not a trail, a cow path. Anything that will lead me somewhere—away.

“What are you doing?” the globeflowers seem to ask, nodding their yellow heads at me. “Where are you going?” the darting catchflies say. And the aspen leaves just
tsk tsk tsk,
turning in the wind.

Oh! Greta! I have to go get her, and I have to get there before the goatman does. For, once his fingers are bound and the pain subsides, old Svaalberd will head for Aunt and Uncle's. Once there, he'll demand restitution for all that he's lost—his money, his fingers—and punishment for the crime committed.

“What's gone is gone,” Aunt will say, meaning she already spent the money he gave her and has no more. “And besides, Astri is not here, and there's no use crying over the loss of her.”

What will he say to that? He'll say, “I want another girl, then.”

But Aunt won't give up one of her own girls. She'll suggest that he take the youngest—Greta.

The thought of it cuts into me. I might as well have swung that knife back on myself and started sawing a hole in my chest through which to pull out my own heart.

I will have to get there first, ahead of the goatman, and get Greta away.

But how? I don't know where Aunt and Uncle live!

Why, oh, why didn't I pay attention when Mr. Goat led me away that first night? I could have at least noticed if I was going up mountains or down dales. Were there streams to cross? Forests to walk through? Now I don't know where to go, and yet somehow I have to get there before the goatman does.

But what if … what if the goatman and I get there
at the same time
?

I turn and climb back up the mountainside. My legs burn. My lungs burn. My head spins. But I don't stop until I reach the fringe of woods below the goat farm. There I stop, hands on knees, breathing hard.

The farm is quiet. Flies buzz in that peculiar way they do when they think they're alone, with no one to pester. Rolf, stuffed with his recent meal, lies sprawled in the sun, fast asleep. This tranquil scene reminds me with a pang that I could have spent the summer at the
seter
. How lovely it would have been to spend every gloriously long day up high on the mountain, alone. I would have lolled about in the warm heather, weaving myself crowns of wildflowers. I would have been the princess of my domain, in my kingdom of goats. And none of this horror would have happened.

I am deep in reminiscence of what never was when old
Goatbeard comes out of the house and limps toward the shed. Why a couple of missing fingers would make him limp, I do not know, but limp he does, gathering up the goats and urging them into the shed with a switch.

Then out of the shed he comes, muttering. He swings his head from side to side as if looking for something. Into the house and out again, tells the dog to stay, and finally sets off with his walking staff and flask.

I am just sneaking after him when I see her—Spinning Girl, standing among the trees on the far side of the farmyard, as if she has been waiting for me there all this time. In her hand, glinting in the sun, is Svaalberd's ring of keys.

Red as Blood, White as Snow

t's slow going with Spinning Girl. She doesn't so much walk as waddle, tipping from one side to the other, and every step is a huff and a puff. So it isn't long before we lose sight of the goatman. Finally, there's nothing to be done but to stop.

We sit down on a sun-warmed stone and pluck at tufts of bog cotton.

“Once, there was a queen,” I begin, by way of explaining our predicament, “whose nose began to bleed. As she looked at the red blood on the white snow, she said, ‘If I had a daughter as white as snow and red as blood, it wouldn't matter at all about my sons.' The next thing she knew, she had a daughter, but her twelve sons turned into wild ducks and flew away.”

I look at Spinning Girl. “Maybe you were bewitched like that,” I muse. “If there was some way to make you all the way human again, what would it be?”

Of course there is no answer to that.

“In the case of the boys-who-were-ducks,” I continue, “it all hinged on bog cotton.” I toss a bit of fluff in the air and
watch it get carried away by the breeze. “In order to break the enchantment, the daughter had to pick enough bog cotton to weave each of her brothers a waistcoat, scarf, and cap. She managed her task, impossible as it was. She turned all her brothers back into humans, although one of them still had a wing because of an unfinished sleeve.”