West of the Moon (14 page)

The Spot of Tallow

t seems like an eternity, these steps to the gunnysack. My ears are pricked for any sound, any movement. But the sack is there—just lying there—and no sign of the goatman. I let go of Greta's hand to reach for it and she whispers, “That stump!” My skin prickles.

“That stump,” she says, pointing to the side of the path, “has
eyes
!”

There, weathered as an old stump, craggy as stone, and sad as a lump of muddy snow, is the goatman. He stares up at us with a strange, twisted grin on his face, sitting propped up against a tree as if dead. But not dead, for his eyes move in their sockets, following us.

“Something is wrong with him,” Greta whispers.

Sound comes from his throat, but no words from his crooked, frozen mouth.

Greta has let go of my arm and moves toward him.

“Get back!” I cry. “Don't touch him!”

But already her hand rests on his forehead, which sets him quaking all over like a wet dog shaking himself dry.

“Let's get away from here!” I say.

“We can't leave him like this!” Greta kneels down next to him.

“Little sister, move away,” I plead. “It might be that the devil got hold of him.”

“He's ill, is what,” she says. “And look at his hand!”

The flesh around the wounded fingers is bluish gray, and the rest of his hand an angry red, puffed up to half again its normal size.

“That's a hideous sight,” I tell her, “and how you can keep looking at it, I don't know.” I turn my head away. Still, out of the corner of my eye, I see him watching me.

His eyes are the only part of his face that seem able to move, and he swivels them in my direction. They drift over my hair and face, then clasp on the key around my neck as if it might cure him.

I tuck the key into the bodice of my dress and button my sweater over it.

“Do you think we should take him to the village?” Greta says. “Maybe there would be someone who could help him.”

“We'd have to get him on the horse, I suppose,” I say. Dapple's nostrils widen; his eyes roll back, and he pulls against his reins as if he understands. “I doubt either one of them could withstand it.”

“Maybe his fits will pass, and then we can decide what to do,” Greta says. “Or someone will come by.”

So here we sit. Greta dips a torn corner of the tablecloth into the stream and dabs it at Svaalberd's fevered face when he can tolerate it. I think about how the girl in the story sat by her bear-turned-prince's bed, unable to wake him. Night after night she sat there, weeping, while he slept the sleep of the enchanted.

I wouldn't have the patience for that. I'm as twitchy inside as this man is on the outside. I know I shouldn't long to go, but I do. I am useless here. Never any good when there's life and death on the line, I can't save this man. I couldn't save Snowflake's newborn kid. I didn't help Mama, either, did I, when she was suffering? When she sent me for help all those years ago?

“Go down the path,” she'd said, “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. But I hadn't wanted to go, had I?

“Astri,” Greta says, “you could go get help, and I could stay with Svaalberd.”

“No!” I cry. “I'm not leaving you here alone with this madman!”

“Should I go for help, then?” she asks.

“No! You are too little to go off on your own like that.”

“Then we'll wait until someone comes.”

So we wait.

B
ut no one comes.

Svaalberd's eyes still follow me, and I don't know whether to look or whether not to, for when I do, I see something I don't want to know. His eyes betray that he is not a goat, not a troll, nor devil, demon, or spirit. He is just a man, and he is suffering.

I shift my gaze to his shirt, to the drop of wax that's dried there on the front. It's a trivial thing compared with the other dirt and stains around it, but it's that drop of tallow that draws my eye and won't let go.

In the story of the bear-prince and the girl, the enchantment could be broken only when the tallow was washed out of the prince's shirt. Only then could the spell be broken.

If I could scrub that spot away, could we turn back time? Could we go back and back and back to when the shirt was clean, before the tallow dripped on it, before I rose from the bed that night on my foolish errand, before we walked through the deepening snow to get to his farm, before he came to get me, before Papa left, oh! before Mama died? Could we go all the way back, and everything could be different? Maybe Mama would not have had to die and then Papa would not have gone away and then Greta and I would not be sitting here watching the life seep out of this man.

It may be that I haven't liked him much, but that doesn't mean I want him to die!

But there's nothing I can do.

Only there
is
, isn't there? Perhaps you have been wondering when I will remember that there is a book of cures, remedies, and charms right in that sack.

I open it and take out the book.

“What's that?” Greta asks, reaching toward it.

“Don't touch it!” I cry, snatching it away. “This is a book of prodigious power.”

“Pro-jid-juss?”

“It means a terrible much. With this book, little sister, you can conjure up and put down the devil and get him to do just what you command. These pages teach how to put out fire without water, find buried treasure, cure diseases, remove warts, turn back the attacks of snakes and dogs, and banish all kinds of pain.”

“
You
can do all
that
?” Greta says.

“Well, you have to know how to read writing,” I admit. “That might cause us a bit of trouble.”

After a few moments Greta asks, “Aren't you going to open it?”

I nod, but hesitate. I'm thinking of things I've heard said: that those who possess the Black Book can go mad. Some have
even done away with themselves. It's said that it can be dangerous even just to
listen
to the words from this book. And I'm fairly certain the parson would not approve.

But I only want to use it for good! Is it all right to use a bad thing for a good cause? I want to do what's right. But how can I, when I am faced with only impossible choices?

As I struggle with this, Svaalberd tries to rise but is seized by such a spasm that he nearly folds himself in two—his head flung back and his legs behind him, as if head and feet will touch behind his back. There's the crunching sound of bones breaking, a snap like the whole trunk of a tree cracking apart. He gasps, the air seems to catch in his throat, and then he's still.

G
reta and I cling to each other, trembling. Finally she says, “I think he's dead.”

“Ja.”
I breathe in the word.

We stand like that for a moment, and then Greta says, “Now we must have a funeral.”

“Funeral!”

“We can't carry him to a church, so we'll have to do it ourselves,” says Greta. “Here.”

“It's going to be pretty hard to bury him,” I point out.

“We shall just have to cover him with moss,” Greta says. And so we do. We pull up a nice thick blanket of moss, soft from the rain, and spread it over his body.

Then Greta takes some dirt in her tiny hand. “Almighty, everlasting God,” she prays, “teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom. Amen.” She tosses the dirt on the mossy grave. “Out of the dust art thou taken,” she says. More dirt. “Unto dust shalt thou return.” And a little more. “Out of the dust shalt thou rise again.”

“That is pretty good, little sister,” I say. “You could grow up to be a parson and wear a black cassock and a white ruff around your neck.”

“That can't happen,” she says, “because women can't be pastors.”

“In America they can,” I tell her. That's likely not true, but they say that women are treated with more respect in America, so who knows?

“Now it's your turn to say some scriptures,” Greta says.

I recite the only scripture that comes to mind. “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a goatman to enter the kingdom of heaven. So, old Svaalberd, I'm not sure you're going to make it. Amen.”

“Now the sermon,” Greta says.

“You give the sermon,” I suggest. “You know all the words, and in the right order, too.”

“You should give the sermon because you knew him.”

“I don't think I really knew him,” I admit. “How much do we really know each other, when it comes down to it? He told
me once about the
huldrefolk
, and about how we live side by side with them, and sometimes I wonder if maybe we're all
huldre
somehow, hidden from each other in ways we can only guess at. I know Svaalberd was a mean old man, but what made him thus? Did he have that hump as a youngster? That would make for a hard life, wouldn't it?”

“This is a very strange sermon,” Greta says.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” I agree. “But I've been thinking that although I didn't know Mr. Svaalberd, not really, nor did he know me, the strands of our lives are braided together somehow.” I pause, and in that moment I see that so is all of life, braided together—this talkative brook speaks my thoughts; the thrush trills out the song of my heart. Were I to stand still long enough, roots would grow from the soles of my feet into the earth.

It makes me dizzy to consider it, but I feel suddenly how all things are woven together, all things seen and unseen, all things alive now and that once were, for generations back and generations to come, woven of a kind of golden thread that links me to Greta and both of us to this man, to everyone and everything forever right now, this moment, world without end, amen. Which is how I finish the sermon: “World without end, amen.”

A Feast

nce we've tied the gunnysack to the saddle and settled ourselves on Dapple, we set off in a westerly direction.