West of the Moon (6 page)

“Sometimes I feel like a
hulder
-maid myself,” I say, “for there are times when I feel as hollow as a lightning-struck tree trunk.” There are times, too, when I feel as invisible as air.

Human or no, Spinning Girl and I get used to each other. She soon comes after my hair as if it's a pile of dirty wool,
picking the sticks, twigs, dirt, and thistles out of it, then braiding it or twisting it into fancy plaits.

That's in the eventide. Workdays, I go through my chores, trying to stop wishing I could get away. Because running away is impossible now that winter is here. The snow stays and winter stays, and I stay.

Some people think it's a romantic job to tend the goats, for they picture the goat girl up in the mountain
seter
when it's summer and the sun is in the sky all the time. The grass is thick and green and the sun warm on your face, and nothing to do all day but braid wildflowers into wreaths and gather cloudberries. Those people forget about winter.

Then it's wake up in the dark, eat breakfast in the dark, haul feed in the dark, gather forage in the dark, cut fir boughs in the dark, haul water in the dark. Oh, and shovel the snow and chop the wood and haul the wood and clean out the ashes and start the fire and rake the coals and cook the porridge and make the candles and knead the bread. All in the dark, dark, dark.

The sun, if there is any at all, never gets above the trees, so you only imagine it. The best you can hope for is to see its pale, cold light winking between the branches. All the while your hands are frozen, red, and cracked. You have to blow on them to get your fingers to bend. And your shoes are always full of snow because your master is too mean to buy you a pair of boots.

The days and weeks go by, and by, and by. The snow is
melting; the sun is getting higher in the sky; the goats drop their kids, and they're all let out to find some grass. Still, I barely notice any of it, since all I know is milking goats, making cheese, hauling buckets, all accompanied by a kick or a slap or a tug on my braids.

Y
ank.
“Girl, why haven't you covered the milk?” The goatman points to the buckets lined up next to me.

“I'm still milking.”

“Keep your tongue in your mouth,” he says.

I shrug.
Slap to the back of the head.
“You cover them pails,” he says. “Keep the dirt out.”

I turn slowly to stare at him. This is the man who hasn't bathed since King Olaf challenged the gods of Dale-Gudbrand.

“You don't bathe,” I say. “Your house isn't fit for pigs to live in. The barn was full of goat dung until I came and cleaned it up. You haven't let me wash my hair the whole time I've been here. And you're worried that a dust mote might alight on the cream?”

I feel a hand yank my arm and lift me up, then my heels dragging in the dirt. I can see the hand coming at my face, and although I turn away at the last minute, the blow lands on my cheek. A sharp sting followed by an ache that will blossom into a purple bruise, I'm sure. A few more of those, and I lose count. I run my tongue along my teeth to see if they're all still there,
but my lips are already puffy and swollen, my mouth full of something I suppose is blood.

I'm tossed down into the yard, which is a mud hole from the spring thaw. So first I feel cold muck seeping through my dress, and next I feel something wet slosh over me. At first I think—hope—I'm under the pump and he's pumping cold water over me, but this liquid comes at me from a bucket. It's warm and sticky and stinks like Odin's underdrawers.

“And by the way, that is
your
job—emptying the chamber pot,” the goatman says. “And since you didn't, that's what you deserve, you filthy-mouthed little wench.” Off he stomps to the house, muttering.

Mud-caked, bloody, and stinking, I stand up and am about to scrape some of the filth off me when something catches my eye. Something different, something that doesn't belong.

It couldn't be a person. Not a single person has come by in all the long months I've been here—including, I think bitterly, any of my relatives. And sadly, Greta, who I know would have come had she been allowed to travel by herself. But of course she is only eight years old and too young for that.

Is it an animal? A tree suddenly burst into leaves? Or a
hulder
caught out in broad daylight? No, it's a human being, with a corona of light around his head, so it could only be a saint or maybe the crown prince. Oh, sure, the crown prince
would
come visiting when I'm in worse condition than a pig.

When he steps forward, I see that it isn't the crown prince, just a boy, not so much older than me, with a pack upon his back. He stands under a birch tree that has come out in catkins all lit up from the sun behind them—as is the boy's yellow hair. That is what makes the halo. A swarm of spring midges enhances the effect.

I must be gaping, for he says so, adding, “Your master, miss?”

I'm sure I've never heard a more honeyed voice, and I open my mouth to reply, but my mouth being swollen—a tooth or two broken, likely—only garble comes out.

“Poor soul,” the boy mutters and begins to make his way toward the house, giving me a wide berth.

The goatman comes out and calls to me.
“Mus!”
he says. “Catch Snowflake and put her back in the pen. Then finish that milking you didn't get done.”

Sure enough, Snowflake is out nibbling at the lower branches of the firs. I go after her while trying to keep my eye on the boy and my master. Svaalberd points off into the distance as if he's giving directions, while the boy nods and shields his eyes against the sun to look. So he's lost, which explains how he got here. The two of them go inside the house. What else are they talking about? I wonder. As soon as I get Snowflake in the shed, I run to the house and stand in the doorway, listening.

“… thought she was a changeling, you know,” the goatman's saying as he wraps up a hunk of cheese. “Her kin tried all kinds of remedies: They flogged her three Thursdays in a row, threatened to put her in the fire, and finally threw her out. I found her crawling about the forest on all fours, took pity on her, and brought her here. Her own people wanted naught to do with her.”

At first I think he's talking about Spinning Girl, but then he says, “Covers herself in dung every day. Try as I might, she won't keep herself clean—” and I realize he's talking about
me
.

This makes me so mad, I fly into the house with my nails toward Svaalberd's eyeballs. Of course, he subdues me and nods his head in a pitying way. He hands the parcel of cheese and bread to the boy, and the boy gives him a coin. (And though it's the bread and cheese
I
made, am I likely to ever see that coin? No.)

“Done my best to raise her up Christian, but as you can see, she's little but a wild bear herself. You see how she injures herself,” he says, clucking his tongue and touching—a little too hard—my tender bruises. “She runs into things, falls. Who knows how these things happen?”

“For the love of God!” I cry. “What a liar you are!” But my lips are so swollen it comes out sounding like my mouth is full of porridge.

“Never learned to talk properly, either, poor girl.”

I kick him in the shins, and he winces. For a moment I
think his temper will win and he'll smack me, which he surely would do if the boy weren't here.

For the boy, old Goatbeard manages the kind of smile the devil might use if he were trying to impersonate the baby Jesus in the manger. It makes me want to vomit. Or perhaps that's from all the blood I've swallowed, and suddenly I have to run outside and empty my stomach over the fence.

Naturally, that's when the handsome fellow steps out of the house. Mr. Goat follows, shaking his head as if with concern for my immortal soul.

“Many thanks for setting me back on the proper course,” the boy says. “I'll be on my way …” My heart sinks. Even one night might give my injuries enough time to heal so I could speak to him. “Off to America,” he finishes.

I look up. America? A thousand questions crowd my mind. How are you getting there? Which direction is it? How much money do you need for a venture like that? Do you know my father?

Instead of any of those, I manage, with great care, to form a nearly coherent sentence: “I want to go with you.”

The boy turns to me, looking at me as if for the first time.

“Aye.” Mr. Goat nods, his eyes shifting uneasily. “From time to time she comes out with something that sounds as if it makes perfect sense, poor thing.”

I resist with all my might throwing a clod of dirt at him.
I'll pay enough as it is. And he'll only twist my actions to make me seem more dull-witted.

“Our ship will be sailing within a fortnight. I'm to be meeting my kin there, so I'd best be off,” the boy says, shouldering his pack, already moving away. Already just a bright spot moving among the dark pines.

When the boy is just about to disappear over the rise, I make my move, bolting for the edge of the farmyard. I can hear the goatman chasing me, breathing hard, and then, oh! his paws clutching. He claps his hand over my mouth, and while I twist and struggle, he kicks open the door to the storehouse. With a shove I am inside, the door slams shut, and the lock turns with a hard metallic
clank
that seems to ring inside me.

I won't sink down right here and weep. Oh, no. I won't give him the satisfaction. Instead, I dash right up the steps to the loft and stand at the window that faces out over the valley, where I can watch the blond head flickering like sunshine among the birches.

The sun is ahead of him now; he is walking west.
West.
That is the direction I will have to go to get to America.

Spinning Girl presses a damp rag to my face and wipes the blood and filth from my limbs. When I'm as clean as I'm going to get, she goes back to her work. As she spins her yarn, I spin a golden dream out of dust motes. A dream of going to America.

To the
Seter

he next morning, the goatman shouts from outside the storehouse. “Up, you worthless girl. It's time to take the goats up the mountain to the
seter
.”

He stands outside with a jacket over his arm and a walking staff in his hand.

“It looks to me as if you're taking them yourself,” I say.

“Just showing you how to get there,” he answers.

“If you point in the general direction,” I tell him, “I'll find it.”

“Wouldn't it be fine if it were so simple as that?” he says.

“What about the spinning girl?” I ask. “What is she going to do?”

“That's no concern of yours,” he says, striking off with such a stride that I have to run to keep up.

Then I remember something. “You told the boy I was a changeling. That's the same story you told me about the girl in the loft.”

“Maybe it was you; maybe it was her,” he says. “It was one of you—who's to know which one?”