West of the Moon (3 page)

n the morning, I am awakened by a sharp kick to my backside.

“What a worthless lass you are!” the goatman growls. “Look! The day is half dead, and you lie abed like a princess. I'm not feeding you for nothing. Up now and to your tasks.”

And so my day begins: milking, hauling, washing, scrubbing, chasing goats, feeding goats, catching goats, avoiding ornery goats. These are the saddest bunch of neglected animals you've ever seen. It nearly makes me weep—their coats matted and tangled, their ribs jutting out, since all they've been eating is sticks. Seems that nobody bothered to cut them hay. So, along with all the other chores, I can see I'll be gathering fodder all winter, too.

S
o the weeks pass. I've mucked out the goats' shed and trimmed their hooves and pulled the burrs out of their coats. The leaves have dropped from the trees, and the early snow has melted, turning the farmyard into a muddy mess, most of which gets tracked into the house and has to be swept out again by me.

From time to time I get—I don't know how to describe it—a strange feeling that makes me prickle all over. “I feel as if someone is watching me,” I tell the goatman.

“Someone is,” he says. “It's me. I've got my eye on you, make no mistake!”

So the days go by.

“Daydreaming again, Astri?” Goatbeard interrupts my thoughts, scowling at me.

What am I thinking? Papa can't come all the way back from America. For all I know, once you're there, you can't ever return.

“Where do Aunt and Uncle live?” I ask, without looking up from my milking.

“You know yourself. You were there,” says Svaalberd. He's examining the gate of the does' pen to try to figure how Snowflake keeps getting out. That nanny goat is always standing somewhere you don't expect. She'll have her face in the window, or you'll see her wandering around off on a hill somewhere. So far, the goatman hasn't puzzled it out, and I'm not about to tell him how she does it. Right now, he is putting so much concentration into his search that he is talking to me instead of telling me to hold my tongue or shut my trap or just applying the back of his hand to some portion of my head like he usually would.

“Yes, but where do they live from here?” I continue.

“A far piece. You know yourself, you walked it.”

“Yes, but what direction is it from here?”

He stops and looks at me, his eyes little slits. “Why do you want to know?”

“Maybe I would like to go home for a visit,” I say.

“Maybe you would doesn't mean that maybe you will,” he says. “The work here doesn't stop because you want to go sip tea with the Queen.”

“I never said a single thing about sipping tea with the Queen. I just want to go home and see my sister. And I don't see anything wrong with it.”

“I'll tell you what's wrong with it,” he says, launching himself toward me and taking my braid in his filthy fist. “What's wrong with it is that I hired you to work for me and not trot home as if it were Christmas any day of the week.” He yanks on my braid so that my head tips back and I have to look at his face upside down, which, it turns out, is just as ugly as it is right-side up.

“If you hired me, then when do I get my pay?” I reply to his forehead.

“You're lucky to get your bed and board, and I've heard just about enough out of you.” He drops the braid and ends the conversation with a slap to the back of my head. If I keep prodding him, I'll end up with a black eye, so I bite my lip—hard. Sometimes I have to bite my lip so hard it bleeds.

Every day is like this: Work work work, bite my tongue
or get slapped, and finally it is night again. Maybe, I think, if I were to run away, night would be the time to do it. But nighttime is different than the daytime; it's almost like a different place, or maybe a different world altogether, a world said to be inhabited by
huldrefolk
—the hidden people.

Nonetheless, every night I go outside and wonder: Can these nighttime beings be any worse than the devil I live with now? And will this night be the night I am brave enough?

Like tonight. On my way out the door, I lift the latch slowly. I don't glance at the goatman for fear he is watching me. The dog cocks an ear but doesn't open his eyes.

When I pry open the door, of course it lets out a squawk.

“Where you going, girl?” the goatman growls.

“To use the privy,” I answer. “Where do you think?”

“That's enough mouth from you,” he says.

I let the door bang shut behind me, and I crunch across the frosty ground—not all the way to the outhouse—and stop. The moon overhead has a big white ring around it, like a puddle of cream within a puddle of milk.

I stare out at the dark wall of trees that circle the farm, opening my eyes as wide as I can, trying to peer past the darkness.I could walk away right now, and just walk downhill. Eventually I would come to
something
. A farm, a village, a river …

If I'm going to go, I should go now. Once it snows for good, I'll be stuck here for the winter.

But, oh! It is so dark. And quiet in a way it never is in the daytime. Tonight is the quietest yet, so hushed that there is nothing to be heard at all. Nothing but a soft
whirr,
like the thrumming of my own heart, yet somehow far away.

I hold my breath, listening. Where
is
it coming from?

“Girl, what are you doing out here?” It's the goatman, standing in the doorway.

“I hear something strange,” I call back to him.

“You hear me telling you to get back inside, is what you hear, or your backside will smart!” he says with a snort.

In I go and climb into my bed. I unwrap Mama's brooch from its cloth wrapping and trace my fingers over it. It's covered in depressed discs like tiny silver spoons. You'd think it would make me remember Mama, but nothing comes of it. I don't even remember her face. Mostly, I remember Papa and the stories he told of Soria Moria and the castle that lies east of the sun and west of the moon. In the story the girl dreamed of a golden wreath that was so lovely she couldn't live unless she got it.

If I could have any wish, I wouldn't squander it on a golden wreath. I might wish for a pair of shoes not so worn out or stockings not so full of holes. What I really want most—well, it's impossible, so there's no use wishing it, or even thinking of it, though sometimes I can't help it. To have my family all together again, whole and complete, that's what I dream of,
and I guess that's sort of like a golden wreath. At least, it's as impossible a thing to get as that.

Usually I'm so tired at night, I collapse and dream of nothing. And it's a good thing, too, because nothing is exactly what I get from old Goatbeard.

“You'd best be careful out there at night,” he says from the gloom of his corner.

“Why?” I ask.

“Why!” he snorts. “You know yourself the forest is full of
huldrefolk
, the invisibles. 'Tis said they are the children Eve was so ashamed of that she hid them from God. And God said, ‘Let those who were hidden from me be hidden from all mankind,' and so they and all their children stay so, even to this day.”

“And so they are invisible,” I add, “and we can't see them, and they can't see us.”

“There are times when the veil parts, and it's possible to see into the other side,” the goatman says. “There's no wall that separates us from them, 'tis just the barest veil.” He lowers his voice to a dark whisper. “And there are times those folk live side by side with us, whether we know it or not.” He grunts and rolls over. “Don't think it can't happen!” he says, and after a few moments, begins to snore.

I touch the log wall by my bed. Are there really hidden people out there? Are they real? Or just made up to keep girls like me from running away?

The Drop of Tallow

n the morning, the first thing out of Svaalberd's mouth is “Have you stolen the knife again,
mus
?” He calls me that—mouse—when he's being friendly. Otherwise it's “dog” or “cow” or “rat” or “pig.” I doubt if I am human anymore, by the names he calls me.

I hand Svaalberd the knife, and he slices off some dried mutton, thin slices you can see through, and he carves off a curling slice of brown cheese. He hands me two slices of bread, one for the cheese and one for the meat. This is my breakfast.

It's better than I got at Aunt and Uncle's.

There was no mutton there, and sometimes we had cheese, but often we didn't. And the bread was sometimes made of bark.

There, I've said it. That's how poor we were. We had to eat bark bread. Still, I'd rather be back at Aunt and Uncle's starving with Greta.

E
very Sunday morning, old Goatbeard drags his oak chest over to the table, where he fumbles for his keys, puts a key in the lock, and with a
click
, unlocks the chest. He digs down
inside it, and I hear the rustle of paper and an enticing
clinkity jingle.