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In their own way, those words were as disorienting for me as Inga’s outburst the day before. I knew Mother was trying to free me from a word she saw as an insult. But although I could not articulate it at the time, yesterday had given me a gift. I’d overheard village kids call me a “changeling” before, and it hadn’t made sense. But now that I’d spoken to Inga and learned how kind she was, the label did make sense, in a way. Perhaps “changeling” could mean “a nice kid who’s different from most kids.” Even if two changelings might be as different as me and Inga, night and day. It might be nice to be given a name like that, if there was someone else who had it too.

But I could not express all that. What I could express to Mother was that I needed to give Inga her sticks. At last she relented, but she wouldn’t go until she’d packed up some of the lefse she’d made the night before and brought it along too.

(Oh, that’s a kind of potato pancake. That didn’t make sense? Joy, where are you from? Okay, the story.)

So Mother presented the priest and his wife with lefse, and I presented Inga with sticks.

“Um, thanks,” she said. She hesitated. “You want to see what I do with them?” When I nodded she led me to her gallery of destruction. I can hardly imagine what the grownups talked about as their children went to a glade behind the cottage, a grassy spot with a small mannequin army.

“I like them,” I said.

“Well, don’t get too attached to them. They’re all for smashing.”

“Why do you smash things?”

“This is where I get my energy out,” Inga sounded more relaxed the farther we entered the glade. She whistled her cow-calling tune. She set the sticks down beside piles of rocks and dirt alongside a stream. “These will be handy for rebuilding.” She gestured grandly at two dozen things made of rock and mud and sticks, resembling the trolls of folklore. “My parents would send me back here to work off my energy. At first they set up woodpiles, but I didn’t find them realistic enough. So I started painting faces on them, twining pieces of wood together to make them look more human, that sort of thing. That made it more fun to smash them.”

“Why do you smash things?”

“Sometimes I get really, really mad. I mean really mad. Some people . . . well, instead of smashing them, I go up in the hills. There I find rocks that resemble faces. This one looks like Bjorn Janson.” She paused, took a breath, and savagely kicked the mannequin. Stone head, rubble body, wooden arms, all fell in a heap.

“Ow,” said Inga.

“Why . . . why do you smash things?”

“Why do you ask the same thing over and over?”

With others I was not able to frame answers, but somehow I found it easier to talk to Inga. “Why do you whistle the same tune over and over? I like how the words sound.”

“But why does it have to be a question? Why not a rhyme, a kenning, a salme?”

“I like questions. Sometimes I forget the answers, too.”

“Well, I don’t like questions. I like to smash things.”

“Why do you smash things?”

“Argh!” Snap went another mannequin’s arm. Inga looked at the stick, chagrined. “Don’t you ever want to smash things?”

“No, not really. Things change so much already. I don’t want to break them. Or hurt anyone.”

“I don’t really want to hurt anyone, Malin. I just get mad. And even when I’m not mad, my body needs to fight. I don’t know why.”

“Do you feel mad now?”

“No. I feel okay. Ordinary.” I couldn’t tell. She looked the same to me now as when she’d punched the tree. She asked, “You sure you don’t want to fight one of these guys? I’d let you.”

“I don’t really want to. I like looking at them, though. May I do that?”

“Sure. I’m going to fight for a while, okay?”

So I looked at Inga’s opponents, while she demolished a few. Sometimes I watched what she was doing, sometimes I watched clouds, mostly I looked at the stony faces. Inga did have a knack for picking stones that looked like they had eye holes, nose, mouth, ears.

“Whew!” she said after she’d crushed a third foe. “Want anything to drink?”

“Yes.”

It was about fika-time, when people often stop what they’re doing to have a bite. Inga’s mother and mine were talking, endless grown-woman talk about names, births, deaths, arguments, reconciliations, food. Mentor Peer had retreated to a corner of the cottage that held many books. That corner tugged at me, as though the great Godbok there had thrown a lasso around me. When we’d had milk, I could not help approaching.

“Hello, Malin,” said Mentor Peer, looking up.

I nodded, my eyes moving from him to book after book.

“May I help you?”

I shook my head and kept looking at the books.

“I am preparing tomorrow’s homily,” Mentor Peer said.

I nodded, continuing my appraisal of his library.

Mentor Peer cleared his throat. “Inga? I am taking my coffee and notes outside. The air is nice. Perhaps you can show Malin the library.”

Inga’s family had many, many books. There were mostly Swan-church books of course, theology, hagiography, homilies, salmeboks, and of course the big Godbok, with its family trees written down at the front. These mostly weren’t much fun for us except some of the more bloodcurdling hagiographies.

“And then,” Inga read with relish, “Saint Fiametta’s pagan betrothed, furious with her for distributing her rich dowry to the poor, had her denounced as a Swanling. When she refused to recant, they tried to burn her alive!”

“That’s horrible,” I said. “Then what?”

“The flames loved her so much, they wouldn’t burn her!”

“Is that is why a girl wears candles on her head on Saint Fiametta’s night?”

“Yah. So they gouged her eyes out and chopped her to pieces!”

“Yuck!” I said.

“Gross!” Inga agreed.

“It’s a good thing,” I said, “they only make the girl wear candles.”

“Sure.” Inga sighed. “Shame they’d never let me be Saint Fiametta. I’d be great. I wouldn’t even wear a crown. I’d tie candles onto my hair like some berserker.”

I laughed. I actually loved Saint Fiametta’s night, though I doubted I’d ever get to play the part either. The very idea evoked giddiness and fear. But I marveled at the candlelit church in the hushed heart of a snowy night, the candlelit girl in its midst. Often, though, I wouldn’t look at the girl but straight up at the shadows shifting on the little wooden church’s ceiling. I told Inga, “You would make a very warlike saint.”

“That’s true. The stories I really like are about battle.” She hunted through a dustier shelf of Mentor Peer’s library. “Here’s one from Oxiland that talks about the end of the world.”

“When the Swan returns?”

“Nah, this is wicked heathen stuff. The best. Fimbulwinter. Ragnarok. Look.” She opened a lamb-leather vellum codex with handwritten words in a florid hand. The words were in the Oxiland dialect, fascinating in their kinship to our Ostoland speech, and I couldn’t completely follow them. Beside it was a blocky illustration of two dragons with castles and mountains on their backs, fighting. Inga said, “Listen. ‘The sleeping dragons that are Spydbanen and Svardmark shall at last shatter their ancient chain and battle each other anew for the treasures of the dragon-corpse that is Oxiland. Whichever dragon wins and gorges upon the organ-jewels of Oxiland will be master of the Earthe. In that final battle the Vindheim gods will return and battle on the side of Svardmark, as will the virtuous warriors of humankind. But on the side of Spydbanen will be evil men and troll-kind, whose powers will swell so that they will be again as they were of old—frost giants vast as hills. Some uldra will be aloof, as ever, but some will take sides.’”

“So much destruction,” I said.

“Yes! The two sides will be nearly evenly matched. In the end, goes the prophecy of the Winterjarl, all will be up to the Runethane. ‘As in the days when Runethane Thorlak defeated the fire giants of Oxiland, or Runethane Arnwulf fought the Twin Dragons of Madrattle, or Runethane Umar fought the Draug Fleet, or Runethane Valdar wrestled the sea serpent in the Meadow of Whales, so now a Runethane unknown will again decide matters. But it is not known if he will side with the good or the evil, and it may be that he will bring about the end of all things. But even if he does not, the convulsions of the battle will slay both dragons, and smoke will rise and blot out the sun, and a great cold will come upon the world, a Fimbulwinter that will threaten all life in the world, not just in Kantenjord. And there will be only a handful of people left to populate the new world. In this way the Runemarked King will bring The End, or only by the thinnest margin prevent it.’”

That’s one of two reasons this story is called “The End.”

Over the next weeks I visited Inga many times, was her second in many mock battles, discussed many stories, and borrowed many books. It was a kind of Vindheim for me, as if instead of Choosers of the Slain, there were Choosers of Readers, and I had been taken out of my old life and brought to a golden library where there were things to read and discuss every day.

Eventually, however, we ran out of books. Our families were blessed with the biggest libraries in Kattsroven, but that did not amount to more than thirty books, and we’d long since exhausted our favorites.

One day I was so absorbed by rereading a translated book from the Eldshore,
The Sisters Darke Collected Eerie Folk Tales
, that I refused to play with Inga even when she came to visit. I had one of my bad moments, when the grip of the thing that fixated me was so strong, it was agony to be pulled away. I fought Inga, forgetting how powerful she was.

She raised her fist, even as Mother and Father were screaming for us to stop.

And Inga stopped, as if I’d suddenly punched her, the way she once punched the tree. There were trickles of water coming from her eyes. I heard Mother say, “Inga, she has trouble knowing what people are feeling. She is still learning.” I didn’t hear what else they said. I was not allowed to keep the book. I threw many things.

Inga didn’t visit for a week.

When she did return, she carried not a book but a huge bag.

“What is in the bag?” I asked.

“Heads.”

“Oh.”

“Not real heads, silly. Come outside.”

I followed her outside, and she began removing big rocks and setting them down around her haphazardly.

“Here, Malin. Look at these boulders. I gathered them from up in the mountains. I picked them because they all look kind of like heads. Now this one, I call Happy. And this one, I call Sad. And this one, he’s Berserk.”

“Why do you call them those names?”

“To me, they look kind of like those feelings.”

“I like Berserk.”

“Me too. See how big his eyes are, here and here? And his mouth, here, it’s kind of like he’s grinning, but really not. He’s furious. Crazy mad. If you see someone like that you’d better be ready to fight or run.”

“I’d rather run.”

“Well, we are all different. Now, meet the other guys. Here’s Mad. She’s Berserk’s little sister. Here’s Tired, he shows up toward the end of the day, usually. And Calm, though she and I don’t hang out together much. And this is Eager. He’s kind of a little boy, I think, because I couldn’t find a big rock for him. And this is Swan Only Knows, because sometimes I can’t read people either.”

I saw what she was doing. “I see what you’re doing. Mother draws faces for me.”

“Right. She told me. But I saw how much you liked my rocks.”

I linked up her rocks with Calm on one side and Berserk on the other. (I leave the ordering of the rest as an exercise for the audience.) “Do you want to read about Ragnarok?”

“Actually, I have a suggestion,” Inga said. “Since we are out of new books, and we’re just village kids who can’t buy more, there’s only one solution.”

I thought about it. “Steal books?”

“No!”

“Completely forget the books and start over?”

“No. We’re going to make more.”

“What do we put in them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we can make something up.”

“Let’s think about it,” I said.

Trouble was, we couldn’t come up with anything. Then Inga said, “I’ve got it! We’ll be like the Sisters Darke. We go find people, especially old people, especially from small villages, and we ask them for their best stories.”

That sounded a bit scary, and I said as much. But it also sounded like it might work, and I said that too.

“I’ll do the asking,” Inga said, “if you’ll do the writing. You have the best handwriting in fifty miles, my father says. Please, Malin.” In a more quiet voice she said, “I’m hoping I’ll find out just who and what I really am, if we go asking the right questions.”

I thought about that for a long time, before I said, “Okay.”

And that’s just what we did. Every chance we could for the next few years, we traveled our island of Ostoland, chasing down tales. We met with enough success, we wanted to head over to Svardmark to get more.

Our parents were torn, to be sure. On the one hand, we proposed wandering far from home for another year! Of course that worried them. On the other hand, both families had been worried about our futures, and our initial pamphlet had actually generated a little coin. Worse things could have happened than our becoming folklorists! As for our safety, well, Inga at sixteen was a match for most foes.

We received permission, grudgingly, to spend a year collecting tales, so long as we were wary of strange men and did not stray from the great roads.

I was indeed wary of strange men. Inga was sometimes a different story.

We also strayed from the great roads, but that too is another story. I will tell it all someday, because I’ve written it down in notes.

You see, I remember letters and written words in a way I don’t remember spoken words. I wrote this story out so I could tell it well. When Inga and I gather tales, she’s the one who gets the villagers to talk, and I’m the one who writes it all down. She can remember the stories in her head—but they change for her each time she tells them. When I write something down I remember it almost exactly. When we’ve gotten enough examples of the same story we talk over a combined version. Then I write it down, and I give it a number. “Katie Woodencloak” is Nineteen. “The Master Thief” is Thirty-Four. “The Charcoal Burner” is Eighty-Two.