North Child (4 page)

“You tell me about Elise,” Rose would say to me.

I suppose that was natural enough, though at the time I did worry that Eugenia spoke of Elise too much, setting her up as some sort of ideal that little Rose would never be able to measure up to. I needn't have worried. Rosie was her own person from the beginning. She never showed any signs of changing her nature to please her mother – or anybody else.

She did ask me once to draw her a picture of Elise. Her request took me by surprise, but the more I thought about it, her curiosity was understandable. I confess I spent far too much time on the little drawing, but I think the work did me good, and Eugenia, too. It brought back many good memories.

When I showed the drawing to Rose, I couldn't tell what she thought at first. She just studied it very carefully for a long while. I had used my small supply of paints to enhance the drawing with colour, and the only question Rose asked was about Elise's hair: “Is that the right colour, Father?” I said yes, it was a close match, and Rose leaned down and laid a small lock of her own chestnut hair next to the yellow.

“Neddy and I are the only ones who don't have yellow hair,” she said matter-of-factly.

I nodded. “Your mother's father had your colour hair. That's where you and Neddy get it.”

“The one who sailed on ships?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. Then she asked me, as she often did, if she could see her wind rose, the one I had designed for her. Shortly after the birth of our first child, Nils Erlend, I had drawn a wind rose especially for him. And though I did not believe in the birth-direction lore, I confess that I used images from it to design the wind rose. Nils Erlend's design contained, among other things, a soaring white tern (a bird indigenous to our most northerly lands), and a ledger and quill for totting up accounts.

I did the same for each child born. Rose, in particular, loved to pore over her drawing, tracing the lines with her fingers. I was always a trifle uneasy when she did, afraid that her keen little eyes might see the lie there. It was so glaring to my own eyes and it made me sad, for to me it marred the beauty of what was certainly the best of all the wind roses I had designed.

A few times late at night when the children were asleep and there was no danger of being overheard, I brought it up with Eugenia. The lie.

“Do you not think it would be best for Rose to know the truth of her birth? She is young yet, 'twould be less…” I paused. “…less harming, to learn it now.”

“I do not know what you are talking about, Arne.”

And truly she didn't.

She no longer saw the truth. She had erased it from her mind completely. And I wondered then if she wasn't a little touched –
brann om hode,
as they say in the old language. Indeed, the serene sureness with which she said that Rose was an east-born made me doubt my own sanity. Maybe it
had
never occurred. But of course it had.

It had been a month before Eugenia's lying-in time when she and I went out to Askoy Forest to search for herbs. We tried to do this together every fortnight or so, a habit begun sometime after we moved to the farm. It was a way to spend a few quiet hours together, uninterrupted by a child's cries or questions. When the children were young, our neighbour Torsk's wife had volunteered to watch them while we were gone, but now we could leave Nils Erlend and Selme Eva, the eldest two, in charge.

Eugenia's pregnancy had been uneventful except for the extraordinary amount of movement from the baby. Eugenia swore to me that the baby had taken it upon itself to explore every last corner of her womb. One morning after a particularly sleepless night for Eugenia, I told her, “This child will be reaching for a map before her mother's milk.”

I instantly regretted my words, because Eugenia pursed her lips and said, “East-borns are not explorers.”

I had a little shiver of foreboding at her words. Eugenia was so set on this unborn child being an east-born, so sure. It was like she was tempting fate.

The day we went off herb hunting was cloudy. Eugenia was keen to find some burdock as well as more feverfew. She had just come across a lush stand of burdock, and was leaning over to pick some, when she staggered slightly. “Uumph.”

“Baby kicking again?” I asked.

“Like he's trying to kick his way out,” she complained, straightening slowly.

“
She
needs to learn some patience,” I replied with a grin. “Another four weeks to go, at least.”

The sky rumbled softly.

Looking up I said, “Best we be heading back. Those clouds to the north look black.”

Eugenia nodded and moved towards her basket. But before she could reach it, she leaned way over, clutching her hands to her belly. Her protracted cry drowned out the rumblings of the sky. Eugenia lowered herself to the ground, her face twisted with pain.

I was at her side in a moment, trying to keep my voice steady. “We'll start back, soon as this pain passes.”

Eugenia shook her head. “No,” she whistled through her teeth. “It's coming. Fast.”

“But I don't…”

“You'll birth him, Arne,” she said.

I had helped with all the other births and was not frightened of it. But a storm was about to break overhead and I was worried. As I set about trying to make Eugenia more comfortable on the ground, I murmured a silent prayer.

She was deep into birthing pains now and her gusting screams echoed in the Askoy Forest.

At one point her eyes flicked open and she looked around, panic-taken. “The sun, where's the sun?” she muttered, then trailed into a drawn-out moan. It may have dimly registered on me that Eugenia was concerned about the birthing direction, but whatever I was thinking went straight out of my head when I realized that I was looking at the heel of a small foot.

The baby was facing the wrong way.

A hollow panic began to burn at the bottom of my belly. I closed my eyes and thought hard. What did the midwife do when the baby faced the wrong way? Some kind of herb, I guessed… I laid a hand on Eugenia's stomach and focused my thoughts onto this unborn child. “Turn yourself about, bairn,” I whispered, willing the baby to listen. But nothing happened.

“Eugenia,” I said softly into her ear, “the baby is facing the wrong way. I'll need to go for help.”

“No!” Eugenia cried out. “He's coming now.” Her eyes roamed the bit of darkened sky she could see through the trees, looking for the sun. “Where is it…? What direction, Arne?”

I felt a great weight of confused emotion. It was incomprehensible to me that with both her life and the life of our child in the gravest of danger, she could think only of her cursed superstition. Then I thought to myself that perhaps she did not truly understand the peril she and the baby lay in.

“I can't do it myself, Eugenia,” I said. “We need…”

“The sun…” was all Eugenia said, only the whites of her eyes showing.

Suddenly there was a great heave under my hands.

Eugenia let out a scream and lifted her body, turning slightly to the right. Large raindrops began to pelt her upturned face.

I stared in amazement at the top of my child's head. Somehow the bairn had turned itself. It was truly miraculous.

I don't remember much about the next several minutes.

Then, “Push now!” I shouted at Eugenia.

And suddenly I was cupping a squalling baby in my two hands. It was small and red and wrinkled, and had a mass of dark hair. A girl. Rain washed down the puckered face. Eugenia held her arms out to us and I quickly folded our bairn into them.

She murmured soft words of welcome over and over, and kissed the clenched eyes and fists.

As she did so a crack of light filtered in through the branches above and Eugenia glanced upwards. And suddenly her damp, flushed face turned a shade paler and her smile vanished. I looked up to see what she had seen, and unexpectedly saw a rainbow with the watery sun behind it. It was beautiful, I thought, and to me was a good omen. The rain still fell, lightly.

“North,” she gasped in disbelief.

Then I understood. And I almost laughed out loud in relief.

“She's a north-born then, is she? Oh well, it must have been destined…”

“No!” she screamed at me. “She is
not
a north-born. She will not be a north bairn.”

“Eugenia, come. There is nothing wrong with a north child. High-spirited perhaps. Besides, it is naught but superstition.”

“She is Ebba.”

I nodded, puzzled. “'Tis a nice name,
Ebba.
Then you will part with the practice of naming with the direction?”

“I was facing east when the birthing began.”

I thought back. The sky had been dark; there was no way to tell what direction Eugenia had been facing.

“She is an east bairn and her name is Ebba,” Eugenia said defiantly.

I nodded slowly, though I felt a stirring of unease.

“I will not have her die,” she whispered.

Die?
I thought, then remembered the
skjebne-soke's
prediction. Death by ice and snow.

“And, Arne, you will never tell a living soul.”

“Tell what, Eugenia?”

“That she is anything but an east bairn. And she
is
an east bairn.” Her eyes burned wildly in her pale, wet face.

I laid my hand on her tangled hair. “You want time to think on it, Eugenia,” I said.

“No.” Her voice was implacable. “She is Ebba Rose, for the compass rose, because she is my last,” Eugenia said firmly, her eyes intent on mine. “Promise me, Arne. You will never tell another living soul.”

I hesitated. Finally I said, “I promise,” because I could not bear the unhappiness behind those eyes.

She smiled then and bent her face over the baby again, murmuring her love.

Later I took the baby from her so Eugenia could rest awhile before we began our walk back to the farmhold. I lightly ran my finger over the tips of the standing-up chestnut hair of my daughter. The hair was damp and cool, and as I looked into her wrinkled little face, a thought came, unbidden, unexpected.
Nyamh, born of the rainbow.
Had I heard it in a poem long ago? One of Neddy's poems? Whatever the case, from then on, though I honoured my agreement to Eugenia, in my heart I called my daughter Nyamh.

When I wrote in the family birth book of the beginning day of my eighth child, I wrote
Ebba Rose.
And when I drew the wind rose, as I had for each of my eight children, hers was the most intricate and would easily have been the most beautiful had it not been for the lie. A strange thing came over me, however, as I drew, and almost without meaning to, the drawing I did also told the truth. But it was only there for one who wanted to see it.

It was a secret, and so it remained until that catastrophic night when the white bear came to our door.

It began during my first journey to the green lands. The joy that seemed to steal my breath for ever. And the knowing-I-must-have or I would perish.

He was a boy then. Playing a game with other children. A round red ball they threw back and forth. Laughing. He and the other children left, then he came back to find the ball, alone. Sweet, fortuitous miracle. I could have willed it so, with my arts, but was too dazzled, unthinking.

His eyesight must have been better than most softskins', for he saw me. Or perhaps that
was
because of my arts, used even without my knowing. I wanted him to see me.

He ran up to me. His face was so strange, with its curling-up mouth showing white teeth, and his bright green-blue eyes. He held out the ball and said, “Would you like to play?”

That is when it began, the strange breath-losing feeling. The wanting.

And so I took him. Not then, that day. But later.

My father's rage was immense. He said I had broken all the laws of our people, the most ancient, the most binding of laws.

I tried to explain to him the way I had done it, so that none of his people knew I had taken him. It was very clever, ingenious. But it was not enough, and my father set up an enchantment. Binding. And with conditions.

I hated it but could not change it. My father was still more powerful than me then. It could not be undone. Even now it cannot.

The conditions were intended as punishment, for breaking the ancient laws, but my father also wove in the opportunity for me to have that which I desired. And once the conditions were met, then the softskin boy would be mine. For ever.