Chapter Four

SHE woke to see a fiery bloom on the windowsill. A note against the glass was scrawled with familiar writing.

She went downstairs, and felt that she was parleying, but she kissed his scratchy cheek, with its russet bristles and the smell of pigs and cows and earth, to moderate his mood.

She sprang - “Tack for the present, Papa!” - back.

“It was nothing,” he said, but his face was aglow.

“Prethent! What did you get?” yelped Signe.

“…Roses.”

“What for rotheth?”

“Because I found them in the woods,” said he with satisfaction, “and made a cutting. I found them while walking. The yellow color is rare, maybe from England, brought over by an admiral’s wife or other. You know that they lived here, jea, during the Revolution? This is your country’s history, children.”

“How did the flowers end up in these woods?” asked Martje, feeling the pleasure of the hearth and the pignuts. “Would the woman have dropped seeds by accident? Or planted it randomly?” That a lady might have done this on a whim, outfitted in a powdered wig nonetheless, dazzled her imagination.

“I think not. The bush was growing on an old house site. I could tell because there was a sunken square in the leaves and rhododendrons had grown wild about it. Landscaping around the foundation, you know. That’s how you know, barn. That’s how you can tell an old house is there. And you have to be careful so you don’t fall into a nearby well. Tell me if you ever find a foundation, so that I can block up any wells in the woods. I don’t want anyone hurt. Especially any of you.”

He drained his hot coffee fast.


She went back up to the roses.

How little they were. She could press her lips upon them and envelop them with her mouth.

They needed her life-giving protection. Stroking a leaf with her fingertip, her eyes were opened and she saw that the cut bush had a spirit of its own. Those velvety buds were as tenuous as infants...the swollen heads bent the spidery stems, and a woodiness was creeping up the stalk.

“I will care for you,” she whispered, her breath stirring its defenselessness. It was a vulnerable orphan. “I will be here for you.”

She had water still in her basin. Filling up a mug, she soaked the arid soil until it was dark as a spice cake.

“I'll name you Rosalynde,” and angled the pot, a live coronet of buds - dipping the leaves into the white pool of light. “I have to go to school now, but you mama wants you to soak up the sun. You’re going to get strong, Rosie. You will live. I promise.”

Standing in the early spring sun, the girl felt the iridescent solemnity of her vow.


That afternoon, Martje took a cold jug to the barn, swinging it through her looped finger, the sparkles and dreams of idealism tingling through her veins.

“Ginger beer and sandwiches,” she announced, trying to sound casual, but her heart felt as though it would burst with love when she beheld her father, with stains of sweat under his arms that dyed his shirt a darker blue, dumping out the horse’s water bucket and smiling upon her appearance.

“My favorite,” he crowed. He took the cup and, to her gratification, drained it lustily. Then he handed it to Olaf, next to him, and smacked his lips and rubbed the foam away. “Ah! That is the stuff that makes a man feel alive. That’s the only stuff a man should drink, O. Remember that - sugar and ginger, nothing stronger. And are these sandwiches for us? What a doll.”

He ripped a chunk out and his face looked like he was chewing stardust. "Who made 'em?”

“I did.”

“Made with love,” he decided, swallowing. “You can always tell. You can feel it. There is an energy.”

Her father knew! He knew that she had cut the ham so precisely, had layered on the freshly-whipped mayonnaise, had sliced the thickest slices of beefy tomatoes, had used the cheese he liked best, had added an unnecessary garnish of parsley. She had even taken the time to toast the bread on the stovetop. He tasted this all.
 
Mrs. Svenson, in a paunchy mulberry dress, was bent over in a corner, eking out milk from the nutmeg nanny. "Don't forget to wash the bowl," she said.

“This is all you need in life,” Mr. Svenson declared. "A man couldn't be happier."

Martje walked out the barn door and Olaf followed her, craning his neck forward.

“Oh, Betty - oh, Betty!” he called, in a high-pitched voice.

She ignored him and kept walking. So he stood still and curved his hands around his mouth.

“Why don’t we go and drink tea in a covered garden? Why don’t we go play a game of ‘I Spy With My Little Eye’?  …Aw, come on. Come on! That is what you want, isn’t it?”

She kept walking.

“Look at you! Do you even see how you walk? Look at you - it’s like this.” He held his head up stiffly and stepped about like a deranged goose. "You look ridiculous."
   
Martje kept walking.


Her little vision-children were more alive than ever: all day they tumbled about her sunburnt legs in the thick of the grass and ran, rainbowy spectres, shouting screams that no one else could hear -

"Lookit dis toad I caught, mama!" "See  lavender clouds in the sky!" "I'm making a fairy bowl with this acorn, ma!"

She dangled Signe's thin body on her hip - precarious, carelessly secure -

"Oh, daring, oh, daring!" she said. "Here comes the wind - oh, watch! Oh!"

Her spirit felt as though it would lift out of her body:

The lady-wind took her fingers and ran them through the white cherry tree. She tore the blossoms down and flung them into the sky like falling stars.

"One more time! Catch them, catch them!" cried Martje, a child herself, as Signe screamed with delight, and they together went spinning together in white whirls, their hands reaching.

A masculine laugh broke the spring snow: not a teasing laugh, but one that made her think of warm crème brûlée and crusted caramel. The flower petals settled. Mr. Svenson was watching from the chopping stump. She stopped prancing, her cheeks pink under curling wisps of amber.

"Marty! You're going to be a good mama some day," he called, standing in his white shirtsleeves. His ax hung loosely in his hand, his knotted muscles spiraling down his brown forearm.  "- And a good wife!"

"Thank you, Papa!"

"It's the truth. I don't lie."

Jea. Everything was possible. Life was possible! Her dreams - all of them -were always within reach. Just over the horizon. Just a few inches away, the blush under her reaching fingertips. The glow that steadfastly stayed at dusk after the sun was gone. Wavering ahead, but there. There, there.

"No doubt," she thought to herself, "that the crazy quilt I am stitching in my heart, will be the blanket with which I cover myself in life. I am going to have. I will have... I will."


Later that day she laid Johnny and Ruthie down for a nap in their trundle bed in her buttercream dream home, shuttered with cornflower blue. With every scratch of her pen, apple trees abloomed around the house...and a few more strokes sent a song bird onto the windowsill.

Her real window showcased her Rosalynde, who was already looking revived. She sat, perky-headed, in the sunshine on the sill. The window was open, and the peach curtains were rolling faintly.

Voices then wafted up to her: that of Olaf and Mr. Svenson by the front door.

“You weren’t in your bed at midnight last night. Where were you?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“Because I’m your father.”

“No, you’re not.”

“What?”

“You’re not my father.”

“I have raised you since were you two, Olaf. I think I deserve some respect. Where are you going now?”

“That’s none of your business -”

“- You live in my house. It absolutely is my business.”

“Then why don’t you ask Wilfred?”

“Because I hardly ever see him anymore.”

“I don’t want to be seen, either.”

“Where are you going?”

“To the woods.”

"To do what?" - blackly hinting. "Come back here."

"Lemme alone -"

Martje ran to the window, and saw Olaf, overly casually, start walking, but then the dark figure of her father lurched forward. When Olaf saw this, he started to run, but Mr. Svenson grabbed him by the back of his shirt and threw him to the ground. Unexpectedly, like a young tiger, he darted up and shoved his father backwards - which shocked Martje, though he could not move Mr. Svenson much - and then his lanky body darted at a jerking run toward the fields.

Martje watched Mr. Svenson, stunned, hesitate - she willed him not to follow him - and he swiped his hand uselessly in the air, and turned, muttering curses, away to the barn. She let go of the breath she didn't realize she was holding, and drifted back to her bed. She looked down at her sketchpad limply.

How quickly the castle crumbled when the knight rode away.


The next day, as she was turning the earth in the herb garden, her older brother Wilfred came and knelt down next to her. He said something low in her ear, because they were not alone. She stood up and rubbed the dirt on her apron.

"Where?"

"His room."

A pale fog around her, like the still shroud of a lake, she floated into the house and up the stairs. She went into the boys' room, as if in slow motion, as if approaching some holy altar, a marble statue of a boy lying on a bed, which contained the relics of a young martyr. He lay there, his arm out, tan, long, lank, lean, and at the end of it, a dirty cloth was tied around his wrist. Martje stared, and her eyes burning into him woke him up.

“What are you doing?” he asked angrily.

“Nothing, I was just -” She looked around for something.

“Get out of my room.”

“Sorry,” she whispered, and ran out.

What was she supposed to say? What was one supposed to say in this circumstance? Her mind was a white field of blankness.

She stood outside the closed door. Then she swallowed and pushed her way back in.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“What do you mean?” he moaned, with his eyes shut, as if she were an intruder.

She gestured helplessly. “I mean - to help... You’re -” She couldn’t finish her sentence.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“I’m - I’m sorry Papa treated you like that the other day,” she said. “He really doesn’t mean -” She tried to speak tenderly but he cut her off.

“Wait, what?” he scoffed. “You think I did this because of him? Psh. He’s nothing. I don’t care about him. He’ll be dead soon anyway. You live in your own head.”

“Tell me what’s going on,” she said. “I want to know” - but she was frightened.

“Why would I tell you?” he asked. “You and your fairy dolls…your future kids running around in yellow dresses.”

“I will understand if you talk to me.”

“No, you’ll just run and squeal to ma and pa.”

“I wouldn’t.”

He sneezed. “Sorry, I’m allergic to bogus.”

She walked away, her heart constricting. She turned at the door.

"I love you so much, Olaf," she stuttered out. "I really do."

He did not answer.



Martje, observing this unfolding drama, took it upon herself to intervene.

“Where do you go at night?” she asked Olaf that evening, as he was half-way out the window onto the oak tree.

“Why are you getting involved?” he shot back.

“Papa doesn’t like it,” she said. “And I’m worried about what’s going to happen.”

“As if I care,” he dropped down threateningly.

She ran forward to the window and decided to make a personal plea.

“Please: for me. I’m so overwhelmed. This is fraying at my mind so much. You could stop it.” She tried to fill her eyes with as much eloquence as she could. “You could help me. Please.”

To her surprise, her new approach slightly worked. She could see the struggle that went on in his mottled face.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said roughly, and swung himself down away from sight.

She threw herself back and put her hands on her head. She looked about the room, and ran to his bed. She shoved pillows underneath his blankets and set it up to look like a fifteen-year old body was stretched out under it. She knew it was daring because, if her artifice was uncovered, Olaf would have been flayed, but it was better than the gaping empty mattress that he so audaciously left there. And then she trumped slowly downstairs and stretched her nightgowned arms and yawned obviously.

“Why are you awake?” asked her mother, glancing up from her mending.

She ran a glass of water and said, as if very bored, “Oh, I was just working on some sums and Olaf was helping me.”

“That’s nice of him,” said her mother absent-mindedly, looking back down at her sewing, and Martje believed she would not check on him that night.



She was wrong.

Her mother, shoving against the door -

That is what Martje woke up to, early, before the sky was even the color of an inner conch shell.

“Open this goddamn door.”

Olaf was probably pushing back.

“I heard you come in this morning,” her mother was shouting. “I found that stuff in your room - open the goddamn door.”

He opened it, perhaps to parley, but his mother went at him like a viper. She darted forward with her hands towards his neck. Martje was up in a flash, but Wilfred got there first, springing out of his bedroom into the hall in only his long johns.

“What is going on? What is going on?”

Mrs. Svenson immediately dropped her arms and put on a sour expression of a dour, passive child. Olaf seemed to take his opportunity - his hand to his neck, he darted out his door past her and made for the stairs. Mrs. Svenson was animated into action again, but Martje was closer to the staircase. Olaf’s thin knees went flying, rampaging down and away, and Mrs. Svenson flew out after him, but Martje jerk her arm out across the stairs, and her mother crashed into her arm. Martje felt the soft sponginess of her breast at the resistance as she sprang back. The contact shocked them both.

Her mother recoiled, looked at her, and spat.

“Bad choice, Martje.”

But she did walk off.

The young girl stood there, long enough for Olaf to make it to Sagolandet, and then she went to bed, but she could not sleep.


A dark cloud hung over her heart. A week later, Hans swaggered around the corner.

“Olaf wants you,” said Hans.

"He does?"

“I was hunting for eggs and found him. He’s asking for you.”

Hans’ voice was very unconcerned…but something told her.

“Where is he, lilla?”

“In the woods.”

“Where?”

“By the crow’s nest.”

“I don’t know where that is…”

“It’s in that tall tree, you know -”

“I don’t know -”

“- it’s a pine tree.”

“I still don’t know - show me.”

Hans’ voice was unconcerned, but Martje felt a prickle in her spine.

“Let’s run, jea? We can pretend the Wights are chasing us. We stole their gold and silver. They’re going to reach you with their cold fingers - quick!”

She ran. She knew. She didn’t know how, but she did.


Hans brought her into Sagolandet, past the Fairy Pool, past Three-Headed Willy.  They flew, not stopping until they found him. He was sitting under the crow's pine: a slim slip, a waif. He seemed to her to not exist. She never saw him here. He was part of the sun, the trees. His green shirt, the gold on his hair.


“I’ve come,” she said. “Is everything -”

“What’s he doing here?” said Olaf. “Make him go away.”

“You can run home now, Hans,” she called. “I have a special new journal up on my bed that I need someone to go through for the kitchen. Can you cut out the pictures for me?”

Hans darted off, and she stepped forward. “Olaf, what’s -”

“I drank this,” he said, holding out his hand. It was a little brown bottle . “There wasn’t enough in it.”

Horror shot through her body. She took it. A ghoulish shudder spread up her arm once the cool glass touched her fingers.

“I thought there was. I thought there would be enough.”

She held onto it, even though there was nothing left in it. It was filled with air. Her palm warmed the glass.

“It was a horrible night. I stayed in the woods. I tried not to wake up,” he said. “I went to sleep and I tried not to,” he said.

“My God,” she said. Or that’s what she tried to say, but her lips didn’t move.

“But I did wake up - I did.” He ran his hands through his hair.

“Olaf, I’m so sorry -” She reached out for him.

“Go’way,” he said, jerking his shoulder back. “I don’t want you here. Leave me. I wanna be alone.”

“But are you -”

“I’m fine.”

“Wait,” she said. “I’ll be back. I’m going to get help,” she said.

“No,” he said. But she was surprised to see his shoulders limp, narrow and thin and sharp under their white shroud. His eyes were gray-red. “Don’t. You don’t have to.”

She could tell his resistance was nonexistent.

“I will, I will. I’ll be right back.” She felt full of ability. She knew here words were a hug to him, were sweet to him. She could feel it. “I’ll be right back!”

And she darted off. She had no idea where she was going, or what she was going to do but something was in control of her brain, something big and black washed over and pushed everything else out.

“What am I supposed to do?” she wondered. “What am I supposed to do?”

Martje ran inside breathlessly. This great, big thing inside of her needed to come out.

“Mama!” she croaked out in a whisper, as her mother was pricking her fingers in a hasty, angry repair of a pinafore which Signe tore on a blackberry thorn, in a corner of the entryway. “Do you know what happened to Olaf?” Her words came out in an excited rush.

“You mean what he did?”

“I -”

“Jea, I know.”

“You - do?” Martje could not have been more surprised.

“Jea, Wilfred told us,” she said. “Your father and I.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Martje felt that she was gripping the ship’s helm with both her hands till the knucklebone shone white.

“Do?” Her mother snapped the thread.

“Yes, do.”

“Nothing, I suppose,” she said.

“Don’t you even care?” cried out Martje. “How can you be like this?” She reeled backward.

“There is nothing to do,” said her mother calmly, keeping her eye on her sewing.

“I’m sure there is! Help him - help him.”

“He doesn’t want to be helped.”

“Yes, he does!”

“How do you know?”

“Because he told me - showed me.”

“Then you go do something,” said Mrs. Svenson. “Maybe he’d listen to you.”

“You’re his mother.”

“And?”

“You’re supposed to help him.”

“How, Martje? …What am I supposed to do?”

“That’s not what I’m supposed to figure out. I’m the child. You’re the parent.”

“Well, guess what: I don’t know. I don’t know what to do,” her mother said, with what seemed to Martje to be ridiculous carelessness, like she had given up completely - like Olaf had done nothing more than taken a walk in the park.

Martje rolled away, putting her hands to her head. “Maybe - the police.”

“The police?” scoffed Mrs. Svenson, with sharp sarcasm. “Really, Martje?”

Mr. Svenson then walked into the room.

Martje whirled to him.

“Papa! Olaf needs help!”

He looked about between his two ladies, like he didn’t know what to do, either. His gaze was very much that of a boy’s.

“I’ve been trying to explain to Martje,” said his wife very solidly, staring down at her sewing again with her mouth drawn downward, “that there is nothing we can do.”

“I refuse to believe that.” Martje felt like she was fighting through weedy sludge of a dense bog. “What about a hospital?”

“He will recover just fine enough,” said Mrs. Svenson. “The boy doesn’t need a hospital. He isn’t sick.”

“But his…spirit is. His heart is sad about something. His mind can’t see. Isn’t there a place for that, to help?”

Mr. Svenson looked as if a bee had stung him. “Are you talking about insane asylums? Have you even heard stories about them?”

“No.”

“And do you realize they would come and take him, whether he wanted to go or not? Do you really want to put him and us through that?”

“No. But there must be something. What do other families do when this happens?”

“How should we know that?” asked Mr. Svenson, very childishly, like an innocent little boy, putting his hands up. “I’ve never seen it before. No one I knew was crazy enough to do that. Everyone I knew feared God too much.  ”

“Jea. I don’t think I drilled the fear of God into Olaf enough,” said Mrs. Svenson with regret.

“Min gud, min gud,” said Martje. “Have you no heart? Have you no heart?”

“You know, Martje,” said Mrs. Svenson, “You’re really starting to grate on my nerves. Why don’t you leave?”

Martje looked at her. “Leave?”

“Jea, go out of the house for a bit. Leave us in peace.”

She looked at her parents in stunned silence.

“You’re just being hysterical,” her mother said, as if she needed to explain more. “And that’s not helping. What this family needs is quiet.”

“Olaf - needs help,” said Martje.

“Of course he needs help,” said Mrs. Svenson, pricking her needle back into the cloth. “And we will do all we can to help him. But right now you can offer nothing, so bring your worry elsewhere.”

“You are not going to do anything - ever,” said Martje. “I just know it.”

“Martje, please. Leave us be.”

Martje marched into the kitchen, grabbed a plate, and swept the contents of a pot of mashed potatoes and meatballs, sizzling on the stove, onto it, and went out the backdoor.


She ran up to the woods.


“Olaf!” she called, hoping he was still there. He was.

“Eat some food.”

“I’m not hungry,” said Olaf. “- And my stomach hurts.”

“Well, I’ll leave it here, then.” She put the plate down on a stone. She stood, feeling like a failure.

“Isn’t there anything I can do for you?”

“No.”

Martje sat down next to him, but a respectful distance apart. She did not trust how close he wanted her to be. She sat in silence, grieved that the only aid she summoned was a plate of meatballs. She allowed the stillness of Sagolandet to surround them, two children, one older, one younger, protected in Sagolandet, but not outside it. The magic did not go that far. But here, the bells of the lily-of-the-valleys tinkled as a late afternoon spring breeze skirted and played and tumbled around them, dressed in billowing scarves. Martje ran her hand up and down a fern frond. Perhaps all he wanted was her silence. Her presence. Either way, she did not know what to say.

“I’m not going back to that house,” he finally said.

“Jea, I don’t want to, either .”

“No, I mean I’m going to leave it. Really soon.”

“Where will you go?” she said, indulging him.

“Far. There are people who will take me - who love me like I’m their brother. I’m serious,” he added forcefully, as if she didn’t believe him.

She didn’t: they were the fantasies of a teenage boy trying to cope with unfathomable violence, but said, “I’m glad you have good friends.” It hurt her to see his façade of toughness broken. The veneer had cracked and he was a limp gray phantom of what he usually was.

“Still, maybe home can be better. We can try to work things out. Maybe you can get a better relationship with our father. I wish you had one.”

He turned on her with viciousness. “Don’t you think I wish I did, too?”

She was shocked at his rawness, his nakedness. He never talked like this.

“My friend Paul Mills is out all day,” he said. “Allowed to go where he wants. And then do you know what happens when comes home? He hugs Mr. Mills and they play a game of checkers. Every night. I’ve seen it. Don’t you think I wish I had that, too?”

Her heart broke for him. Here was this boy, with hair already on his chin, who barely let his sister touch him, and who could throw hay bales without breaking a sweat - saying he wanted nothing more to be held by his father and play a game of checkers with him. She could say nothing in the face of that.

He picked at grass. “But I don’t care. That man doesn’t affect my life. I couldn’t care less about him. He’s nothing to me. But I do wish he would treat Hans better. You should hear how he talks to that boy."


He looked away and sighed, but she felt the sigh was for her benefit. “Well, we’ll see.” He paused. "Anyway, I don't care about me. The one I’m most worried about is Hans. You should hear how Pa talks to him.”

“I do hear,” she said sadly.

“No, no,” he said. “You should have heard him yesterday. ‘Hans, you run like a girl!’ It breaks my heart. And I can’t do anything.”

“I know just how you feel.”

It surprised her to hear him talk this way. But then again, it was he who once said, “The moth left angel dust on Han’s heart.”

"I can't do anything," he repeated.

They sat together, an unusual pair. The sun beat down on their copper heads, shining. What more was there to say in their mute pain?

“We’ll all leave someday,” she comforted him. But the heart of her wanted to stay...wanted to believe that happiness was possible, that the barn and the dream and Johnny and Ruthie, all could be combined in her relationship with her father, that they really could have picnics together on the grass and sing together in the parlor after dinner. It could happen, couldn’t it? Couldn’t everything be better?

“But if it's not just Mama and Papa, then…what’s wrong?” she asked softly.

She tried to be an open-minded woman of the world. “Is is drinking? Opium? A broken heart?”

He made a flinch with his face away. “I really don’t need this.”

“It is a broken heart, isn’t it?”

“I can’t see someone I’m - a friend with,” Olaf said.

She tried to be sophisticated. “Who is she?”

He looked at her quickly.

“A friend, I said. It's a 'he'.”


“Oh, then. Maybe,” she said comfortingly, “You will get to see him again soon.”

He rubbed his hands through his hair aggressively and then smiled. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so."

"Yes," she insisted. "I'm sure of it."

He looked away and sighed, but she felt the sigh was for her benefit. “Well, we’ll see.”

“Olaf,” she said. “Don’t ever do that again. Please.” She awkwardly skittered over and reached her arms around his neck and body.

He held her under the whishting of the pine.

“It’s alright,” he said soothingly. “It's alright. Really, Martje. It's alright.”





Painting: "Yellowstone Meadow", Shirley Novak

Chapter Three

She came inside one evening, while her father was sitting by the fire in the parlor, and her mother was frying fish. Martje hesitated, and then went in to him.

“What are you working on?”

“Just some writing, mitt hjärta.” 

She sat down next to him on the hearth. 

He was eating his pignuts, stored over from the winter, cracking them with a stone on the bricks. They were his special treat - he hoarded a sack in the cellar - but he generously handed her a slip: snow-white and buttery.

“May I see your writing?” she asked, taking the meat.

“Jea. It’s a poem called ‘The Death of the Gardener’. Maybe,” he said, almost like a blushing boy before a schoolteacher, handing the paper over, “You could help me with it. I know you’re good at writing. I’ve seen what you bring home from the school.” 

Flattered, she read his poem rapidly, feeling self-conscious at his expectation, and was both embarrassed and moved by her father’s romanticism. The poem was about his sentimental relationship as a young man with a gardener who worked on a farm with him.

She was puzzled by the title. “Why is it called ‘The Death’? - Is he dead?”

“I don’t know. He was very old when I left him,” said Mr. Svenson. “But death is a natural progression of life, Martje. You need to know this.”

- By which she assumed her father believed death was more artistic than life.

“He helped me to marry your mother,” he said dreamily. “He told me to do what was right. He was of the old gentleman sort, that rarely exists now. In those first couple of years, I really wished he was here with me in America. It was so hard for me, Martje…in so many ways. You children cannot know those kind of things, what adults go through. You do not know what it is like to be on your own yet.” 

Martje was suspicious that her father’s eyes had become misty. They at least had a faraway look: blue skies and white clouds and unploughed earth were reflected in them…and a willow tree. Her insides clenched up. But she thought her father had no one else to talk to, so she matched his level of intimacy:

“I bet your friend would have liked to have seen this. It would have made him happy.” 

He looked at her tenderly, and said, “Well, it needs to be edited,” and smashed a pignut.

So she slipped the pencil between her teeth. She looked at the paper, and for some reason felt her pulse quicken. Some primordial juice was flowing in the stalk of her veins. 

“You could use the word ‘spark’ here,” she said. “You could say, ‘Will this town ever know / Who sparked the spring blossoms / And helped them to grow’?”

“I like it, Marty,” he said, and scrawled her words over his own.

Her heart swelled with importance and she felt superior, as their two copper heads bent over the paper together. Some of his stanzas were shamefully clumsy, like a lad fumbling to express his love. But when she read the poem again, after being smoothed by her own youthful hand, her mind beamed with accomplishment: she had successfully evened his rhyme, eased the expression of some thoughts, and added a few jewels of words. 

“Thank you, Martje,” Mr. Svenson said when they finished, a bit patronizingly, to her curiosity.

Then the fire popped, and a hard hit of his sent the green hull squashing. The stone came down again, finely, neatly, on the ridge of the saddle-colored nut. It split to reveal its shining white inside, like a Fabergé. 

He gave her the oily, largest piece. As she swallowed it, she was filled with a confidence that she always hungered to feel with a parent. She longed to talk about death and life and mystery and desire and depth and God and heaven and spirituality and misery and tragedy. 

“I want to be - a writer, too,” she said, picking at the edge of her rusty dress, “I think.”

“Never,” he said, “Never as a life work, Martje. It is foolish and does not feed mouths. It is distraction in life. Even on the deeper levels, it does no good. It is no good for the soul.” He was quite emphatic on this point. “It is for one’s own amusement, but in the end,” he gestured towards his own masterpiece at his feet, “It is all dross.” 

She did not know what that word meant, but she strangely felt a need to defend her father from it. She picked up the paper and cradled it.

“No,” she said. “This is very good! You are very talented!”

“Thank you, liten dotter. That is a lot, coming from you. But I have never finished anything. I have been scribbling since I was your age and I have never gone anywhere with it - and I never will. Truly, it’s only given me frustration. What a silly thing it is!”

“This you have finished,” she said.

“Jea, with your help.”

Martje could have exploded with the pride and tenderness, importance and pity she felt, and these emotions bonded her to him inextricably. She was necessary in her father’s life, for she had saved him in a little way: she had helped him, made him feel whole and like a man, completing something for once. She could say nothing, only to look worshipfully at the ruby stubble on his cheek, and at the stain of earth on his rigid shoulder.

“Want another pignut?” she asked.

Then he got a look in his eyes that made it seem like her father wasn’t the in the room anymore, and Martje suddenly wondered if at one point he was one of the clan but had lost the glow, because something funny came into them. - Or had he just been drinking? Either way he was speaking about her but did not seem to be speaking to her. He was distant, in another world.

“You, of all my children, will be or do something great,” he said. “But I wish I could save you the frustration. Do not be foolish and go into art. At least, not with your whole heart. It eats hearts and people just throw their lives away on it. Believe me, I have seen the depression. If you want to write or paint, let it be a hobby, my little girl. Please, just let it be something on the side, hjärta. A distraction. It is all dross.”

He pleaded, with pain in his eyes. And Martje was frightened to see a purple spark flicker underneath the dark deer-brown, the murky failure.

She sat gaping, but before either could say more, Mrs. Svenson stuck her head around the corner. “Dinner,” she said.

She set the steaming stekt strömming on the table. Martje loved the golden, crispy look of the fish.

“Elbows off the table,” Mr. Svenson said to Hans. The boy was leaning on his bony arm, half-slouched over the table.

“But, Pa, I’m tired.”

“So am I: sit up.”

Mrs. Svenson sighed. “I wish we had some lingonberry jam.” 

“What is that?” asked Martje, taking the cue.

“Oh, jea, you wouldn’t know. The fish is not the same without it. It is sweet and sour and red.”

“Jea, I miss that, too,” said Mr. Svenson. “- Good fish, Mama.”

“It’s the dill,” said Mrs. Svenson, forking out a piece for him.

“And the fish. Are you going to thank the one who caught it?” asked Mr. Svenson.

“Be grateful to your father, children,” said Mrs. Svenson.  

“You laugh,” said Mr. Svenson indestructibly, “but do you think you’d have this herring if it weren’t for me?”

“Sure and we could survive on our own,” muttered Olaf.

“What was that?”

“- Nothing.”

“You’re a pojke, Olaf, and couldn’t stand a minute out there. Not in that world,” Mr. Svenson said, pointing his knife at him. “At least not with the way you defend yourself. - We’ve all seen it.” 

To Martje, her brother’s humiliation was palpable.

“I think it’th delithiouth, Papa,” lisped Signe.

“You’re welcome, daring,” he smiled, and Martje could not believe how obvious his childish needs were. “I got up early just for you.” But then he turned to Hans again. “Elbows!” 

“I’m not doing anything,” implored Hans. “I’m just resting my head. I’m sitting up.”

“Your elbow is on the table. Get it off. If you need to sleep, go upstairs and go to bed now.”

“Boys need to eat when they’re growing,” said Mrs. Svenson softly.

“They also need to listen to their fathers,” said Mr. Svenson. “If you aren’t up by the time I finish this sentence -”

Hans rapidly sat up and slid his arm in his lap. Martje did not like to see the boy’s slumped shoulders, or the dull look on his face. He was only seven. He was too young to own that expression: that of disconnection, of imagining that one was not where one was.

Mr. Svenson took a breath and smiled, looking around at his family, all orderly. “Now,” he said. “We’re missing someone. Where’s my oldest? Where’s Wilfred?”

“Out,” said Mrs. Svenson, “most likely.”

“Out?” said Mr. Svenson, his brow darkening. Martje felt a storm cloud gathering above the table. “Doesn’t he know we eat together as a family?”

“We always have.”

“He knows what time dinner is at, jea? - or at least, what time it should be at?”

Mrs. Svenson ignored his barb. “I assume so.”

“Then why isn’t he here?”

“Why are you asking me this?” Martje saw that her mother’s hand was tight on her fork, resting on the table.

“Because you are the mother of this family; you take care of the children; you are supposed to keep track of them.”

“He is seventeen and you are his father,” said Mrs. Svenson. “You talk to him when he comes home.” 

“I disagree. You’re the mother. You’re in charge of things like this because you’re around the home more.”

The rest of the children stayed silent, most of them just staring at their plates, focusing on chewing, or some idly looking out the window at the flickerings of yellow and green: they had acquired temporary deafness. But Martje could barely swallow.

Mrs. Svenson then stayed quiet. She turned to Signe. 

“More fish?”

“Yeth, Mama.”

Everyone jumped when Mr. Svenson exploded: “Elbows off the table!”

Martje felt so jarred that a flash of heated anger went through her:

“No wonder Wilfred doesn’t want to come home for dinner,” she snapped, enflamed. She couldn’t stop what she was saying. “Those who do get told off.”

There was silence as the two of them stared at each other, father and daughter.

“What did you say?” asked her father as if he didn’t hear her correctly.

But before Martje could save herself, Olaf spoke up. “She’s right,” he said. “Here you are harping on Hans for the way he’s sitting at the table, when at least he is at the table. Wilfred has the right idea. I’d rather eat with the cows,” and he shocked the whole family by picking up his plate and getting down from the table.

Mrs. Svenson - “Olaf!”

Mr. Svenson - “Did we give you permission to get up?” 

“No,” said Olaf, continuing to walk away.

“Then you come back here right now and put your plate down.”

So Olaf came back, coolly put his plate down with its unfinished food, and walked out.

The father looked at the mother as if to say, “Well?”

And she said, “This isn’t my fault - what do you want me to do?”

But for some reason Mr. Svenson let Olaf go. Martje was surprised to see her father send her a look across the table - an infuriated one, as if Martje was perpetrator.

“Isn’t there more butter?” asked Ingrid in a small voice.

“Yes, I’ll get some,” said Martje, standing up to go into the pantry. To her surprise, her father got up also. She was a frightened to see him follow her: he was conscientious in ensuring that the other children did not see how he acted sometimes, and she did not like the idea of being in that small room alone with him.  

She was correct - behind the door, where no one could see, he grabbed her upper arm aggressively.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” he whispered. “Don’t you ever undermine my authority again. Do you see the affect you have on the barn? I can’t have that happen.” He dropped his hand, and awkwardly, shortly, stroked her hair. “You are mitt hjärta, but never again. Jea? You need to set an example for the others. - Jea?”

She didn’t answer. She shook herself as if he was still holding onto her - she felt so - and walked out with the butter. She sat on her chair at the table and set the crock down in front of Ingrid. The clank of the clay on the wood sounded cold and dead.

“What happened?” asked Mrs. Svenson casually.

“Nothing,” said Martje. “I found it.”

Then Mr. Svenson came out, holding a jar of raspberry jam. “Well!” he said. “Maybe this will work.” He sat down. He liberally smeared it on his stekt strömming.

“Is that good?” asked Ingrid.

“Ah, not as good - but it does fine enough!”

If something could go worse, it always did, in Martje’s opinion: for right then, Gerte started to wail upstairs from his cradle. Mrs. Svenson’s chair squeaked backwards to go get him, but all of a sudden Mr. Svenson said in an imperious tone and put his hand up to stop her,

“Don’t.”

“I have to get him,” said Mrs. Svenson, and Martje was anxious in hearing that her manner was explanatory.

“No, sit down. He’s fine.”

“You shouldn’t talk to her like that,” hazarded Hans.

“Be quiet,” said Mr. Svenson. He looked around at the table. “If anyone dares get up, there will be huge trouble. I’m just saying it right now. Don’t anyone move.”

Martje looked at him. Her nostrils flared like a dragon several times. 

Her mother sat moodily, her shoulders haunched, her mouth an iris drawn downward. Martje knew she was not moving, not because she did not want to get her baby, or because she was afraid of her husband, but because she did not want the children to see a fight. She was choosing to protect the ones at the table at the moment, and her daughter knew what that was like.

Martje calculated fast. If anyone, Martje could dare it. Ingrid would have been too scared; Hans would have been clobbered. She was probably the safest bet at this moment. She had helped her father with his poem: he loved her, she knew it…he said so. She was his favorite. She rationed it out in her mind, weighed the consequences, and her love for Gerte toppled all scales.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting Gerte,” she said. She put down her napkin. Her whole body was shaking, on the inside and outside. She tried to make her voice sound as normal and calm as possible. Surely her father would see the rationale of it.

“Gerte is fine, Martje,” said her father. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No, he’s not. He needs to be held.”

Mr. Svenson voice broke: “I can’t believe I’m having this fight with you, too!” She kept walking, and he cried out after her as if he had been betrayed: “Your mother, and now you!”  

She ran upstairs, propelled onward by Gerte’s wails: the sinews of his heart were her own; she could do naught but respond. 

She scooped him up and he melted like butter in her arms: so tender, he attached himself to her as if their pores and cells were one. He buried his face in her shoulder. She held him against herself like a warm sack of flour. “See,” she crooned, “Things are all right. Things are all well. Papa understands.”

She was tightening her breath and listening downstairs. The kitchen seemed tranquil, but it might have been the calm before the storm. And now that she had done this, she was unsure about what to do next. She had not thought this far ahead. 

It seemed safest to walk downstairs with Gerte casually. Sometimes if she pretended everything was peaceful, her environment responded in kind. - Sometimes. So she took a breath and stepped forward.

Then she heard noises downstairs that terrified her - “She’s like you, and my mother before. Crazy, all of you! Emotional. Can’t handle life. Using men, not appreciative. Hating and belittling us, that’s what you do. You’re all uncontrollable!” - “Don’t bother with her,” her mother was saying, but a chair scraped backwards as if somehow jumped up in extreme anger. Mrs. Svenson said, “My god, Axel,” and Ingrid burst into tears, and then Martje heard thundering up the stairs, of a body jerkily moving and thrashing forward. The bedroom door burst open and her father lurched in, as if he had been transformed - no longer the pignut-crunching, rosy father who loved his little girl on the hearth, but a dark-faced monster, whose countenance had literally transfigured into darkness and twistedness. He hovered, hulkingly, in the doorway.

“Put him down,” he said. “I’m not going to ask again.”

“Papa, he’s fine. He’s just calmed down.”

“Martje,” he said, in a stronger tone. “I am telling you right now as your father: put - that - baby - down.”

Martje felt herself turn her body away by instinct. She did not want to fight. She tried to soothe the beast. “It’s fine,” she said. Maybe she could talk him down. “See, he’s calm now.” She begged him to see reason; her voice was calm. This was a bad dream. Maybe she could talk herself out of it, wake herself up. “See, if I put him down he’ll cry.” But she was starting to feel reality slip away from her; the look in his eyes was vacant; he was not registering anything he said; logic was not working.

He only repeated:

“Martje, I am telling you as your father: put - that - baby - down.”

He was blocking her escape, because he was standing in front of the door. She was trapped.

“Put him down.”

“No,” said Martje, holding Gerte tighter.

“Put him down!”

“No.” 

“Put him down!”

“No.” That seemed to be the only word she could get out now, as she held Gerte away from him: the guttural sound was loosed from her; her mind had seemed to lose hold of its own rational part, and her survival instinct had risen up like a blanket over all of her other senses. She could think of nothing, say nothing but refuse, and was aware of nothing but of the life in her arms.

“I swear to God, Martje, if you don’t put him down -”

She didn’t know what would have happened then, except that Mrs. Svenson burst into the room. “Stop it, stop it, stop it,” she said wildly. “This is enough, this is enough. I can’t stand any more of this. I am going crazy. I am going crazy.”

The haze in Mr. Svenson’s face broke like a cloud and cleared. He seemed to become aware of his surroundings again and he turned towards his wife.  

“Yes, you are,” he said. His voice was cold. “Look at the instability you bring into this house, Olga. If you let me take care of things, there would never be this sort of unbalance. You need to learn to control yourself one day. Go back downstairs and let me handle this.”

Mrs. Svenson put her hands out. “Not until I see that everything is fine.” 

Martje looked back and forth between her parents. She took stock of their emotions, gauged the level of danger, and decided that the next move in the game was hers. Her father seemed slightly more rational, Gerte was fortuitously calm, and she guessed that her mother offering further resistance would only provoke her father. So Martje said,

“Yes, go downstairs, Mama. Everything is fine.” Then she turned to Mr. Svenson and said steadily, almost sternly, “I am taking him to my room. I will take care of him for the night to give you both a break” - as if by way of excuse. 

Shockingly, Mr. Svenson accepted the arrangement. “I can’t deal with this anymore, anyway,” he said, as if suddenly exhausted. “Both of you against me.” So Martje sailed past her parents unscathed with her pearl in her arms.

In the privacy of her room, she sank down on the wooden floor. She placed Gerte on the braided rug and swallowed salt. She became aware that her heart was racing. 

“Oh, älva,” she said, running her hand down his silky blonde hair, smooth as a river stone. Her hand was still shaking. “I have something for you.” She pulled a corn husk doll out from her bottom drawer. “I made this yesterday. Here comes docka to give you a kiss!” And she tripped the doll up the baby’s chubby legs and dapped it on his nose.

“Bop!”

Gerte’s giggled broke out like a thousand petals of tiger lilies and sunflowers but the garden would not take root in her mind. 

That night Martje lay on her bed, by the smudgy light of the oil lamp, drawing picture after picture - mothers tenderly bathing their babies, husbands sitting with their arms around their wives by the fire, young lovers in the snow cutting down a Christmas tree - but the characters all came out ugly and half-formed, and her pencil became heavier and heavier until her hand felt like it could not move anymore, and she put her head down on her sketchpad. She had never felt this way before. Even her pictures could not chase away the new feeling: and this frightened her more than anything. 

The door softly opened, spilling a warm orange light into the room, from her father’s spurting candle.

“Are you awake, dotter?” he whispered.

She put her tousled head up. “Jea, I am,” she said, shoving her book under her blanket.

He came softly through the room and set the wicket down on her bedstand and placed himself on the bed next to her. 

Something about the dynamic shift from violent to mild movement made a dam swell up inside of her body, and she did all she could to slam a door against its exit point in her throat and eyes.

“I just wanted to talk to you about what happened tonight.” 

“Jea?” said Martje, struggling for control.

“Jea, I’m sorry about today,” he said. “And I wanted to make sure everything was good between us.”

“Everything’s fine.” 

“I’m glad to hear that. You know,” he paused, “you really could be a very good woman, Martje. You know I think you are one.”

“Thank you, Papa,” she said. 

“And you could be an amazing woman,” he continued warmly, “but you need to humble yourself more. You don’t want to end up a - hard woman, do you?” He rubbed her knee persuasively. “Always in rebellion? No, of course you don’t, mitt hjärta. If only you could let yourself be molded…like your mother won’t do.” He raised his hand and ran it down her soft hair once. “You have so much talent, but you just need to listen to your papa. Listen to your papa and everything will be good. You will find your way and your happiness. God blesses women like that. Otherwise you’re going to end up like her - and do you want that?”

His words could not have held more potency, because the last thing Martje wanted to do was end up hard like Olga Svenson.

“No, Papa,” she said. “I don’t want to be in that way. Help me.” 

She could hold back the swelling no longer: the dam broke and she began to cry.

“Shh.” He held her tightly and rubbed her back. “It’s alright. It’s alright. You’re not going to drown. I’m going to help you. We’ll work on this together.” He leaned back and tipped up her chin. “Everything’s going to be alright, little daughter. Jea?”

Painting: "Farmhouse at Kammer", Gustav Klimt

Chapter Two

THE NEXT afternoon Martje sat in the forest, dabbling her feet in the stream. Any moment, her Rowan was coming. The light was prancing with the feet of flower-fairies on her head. Her bare legs were flickered over, yellow and white and purple, with the shadows from the tossing leaves. These woods was the only place she felt safe: neither her father nor her mother ever entered them.

Sagolandet was a child’s kingdom, sacred and protected.

To reassure herself of the security of its boundaries, she remember a day, three years ago, when its borders threatened to be breached.

She had been prowling in the dusty attic that afternoon, looking for relics. In a frayed hatbox she had found a treasure: two wooden dala horses in the attic, about the size of her hand. They were butter-yellow and dancing with blue and green paint, and their noses and hooves were chipped with age. She thought her mother would be delighted at her discovery.

So she skipped downstairs and into the parlor and placed the decorations on the mantle for her mother to find. And then she went back up, inspired to find Mrs. Svenson’s trousseau.

But after a futile hour of searching, she went into the kitchen and said,

“Mama, I was looking for your wedding dress and couldn’t find it.”

“That’s because I had no wedding dress,” said her mother, scrubbing a pan. Her back moved fiercely into the pan. She was not pregnant, and her strength was imposing.

“Why didn’t you have a wedding dress?”

“I had no wedding.”

“And why did you have no wedding?”

“I’m in no mood for questions, Martje.”

“Is it because of Solvig?”

Mrs. Svenson unexpectedly turned around and struck her.

“When I say don’t ask, I mean don’t ask.”

There were soapy bubbles clinging to Martje's cheek as she stood, stunned.

Mrs. Svenson said, “When are you going to learn to obey?” but her voice suddenly sounded weak and unsure.

Martje felt a heat wave go over her and she turned on her heel and ran out the door. She didn’t stop until she reached the woods, and there she flung herself under her tree, and lay on the needles, too inflamed to cry, and thought thoughts that engorged her brain with hate.

Ten minutes later, she saw Mrs. Svenson stalking through the field, her apron still on and her sleeves rolled up: there were probably still suds on those hands. Martje figured she was coming to apologize. Martje sprang up like a wild thing and tore backwards through the woods, keeping an eye on the border. She believed her mother would not dare go near the willow tree that grew on the edge of the forest, but she was not certain.

Mrs. Svenson did not even approach the woods. She just stayed in the field, a hundred feet away.

"Martje!" she called. "Martje!" She cupped her hands around her mouth.

Martje crouched behind a thick pine, holding the scratchy bark with both her hands, and would not answer. She stayed there for at least fifteen minutes until she felt safe and was sure her mother was gone, and she blessed the willow tree. It stood like a sentinel over her kingdom, repelling both her mother and her father, and her mind endowed it with a mystical power: it gave her a refuge when nothing else would.

That evening, when she miserably came in for supper, Mrs. Svenson said nothing to her, but she treated Martje with consideration for at least a week afterwards.

She did not mention the dala horses. Overnight the horses disappeared, and Martje woke to find them gone.


A robin’s call trilled above her head, so close it cleaned out her ears, almost with pain. She dug her toes deeper into the silt of the stream, and waited in Sagolandet for her Rowan.

His tread presently broke through the stillness of the forest.

She rose to meet him hastily. Her gown was the color of jack-in-the-pulpit berries, and tucked into her belt was a cluster of starflowers. Her hands were full of sweet fern.

He himself was twirling a sprig of ash in his hands, and he was holding the bridle of Thangelfras in the other hand, but she was taken aback to see what swung by his side.

“Whyfore does thee carry thy sword, Rowan?”

“’Tis a time of unrest, my lady,” said Rowan, merrily. “Though I think not that there will be war.”

“Neither do I,” said Martje.

“I should not let thee wander out here, e’en with myself, if I thought so.”

“My father neither.”

They walked together along the sunny path.

“And what dost he think of the trouble with black Brenandon?”

“He thinks as thee do: that there will be no war. But, Rowan, I have strange news to convey, if thou hast not heard it yet.” She dropped her voice. “My father heard yestermorn of great burnings in the far north. Ha’ a village was burnt to the ground, bordering the black land. It troubles him deeply. The messenger spake neither of attack nor freakish accident; he knew not: he bore only the note. It said, ‘Ha’ Ipsen-Weich wast burnt.’ My father sent a great caravan of relief through the mountain, an’ a dispatch of Villen-Braghs immediately ahead of the caravan. He is a good, kind ruler, and prudent, too. The fastest rider was bade come back with news on the morrow. He rides Ervenstach.”

“Thy father hast left vassels at home, yea?”

“Yea, as a matter of course.”

“How many were deployed?”

Martje’s tone changed. “I do think the trees have ears: speak not.”

“Thou art not afraid in these woods?”

“Nay, but I am afraid. There seemeth even in this woodland sunshine to be a chill.”

“The wind is chill, though the sun doth shine. Thou art cold; it is merely mid-spring. There; my cloak.”

“Nay - nay - for what is that sound?”

“What sound? - Martje!” for her face was white.

“The horns - the horns - from Beugal-Blach!”

Rowan harkened, heard the calls, and then cried, “My home is under attack,” and immediately was animated into action.

“It cannot be - it cannot be - how are they here?” Martje cried wildly.

“Canst thou ride hard?” asked Rowan. He did not even wait for her, “Yea,” but said, “Thy hand,” and put her up on Thangelfras and mounted behind her. He kicked his horse toward Siodha.

“But, nay,” said Martje, her hair flying wildly, her red robe streaming, “Thou must get thee back to thy father’s house. Dinna wait for me.” He did not answer, but rode harder on.

“Martje!”

The call of her name crashed through her dreams.

“Martje!”

It called harshly, the voice so loud that - from a distance away - it carried through the overhead branches unsnagged, though the trees tried to crouch over her like she had crouched over Signe, and landed abusively on her ears.

“Martje! Where are you?”
        
She got up and flew home, trying to look unperturbed. When she got to the farmhouse she saw that her mother was no longer outside: Mrs. Svenson did not have an extra second to spare to wait for her daughter's reply.
        
She hurried into the kitchen and saw her, brow contracted, pouring boiling water from a pot of potatoes.
        
"Did you call me?" - with uncertainty.
        
"Off traipsing in the woods! Do you know how much work I have to do?" her mother said, not looking at her. She was jerking the pan to get the last potatoes out that were stuck at the bottom. "And here you go off, light as feather, feeling like you can float around wherever you want. You are so irresponsible and fancy-minded."

This was a reproach and not a request for help, and her youthful hot temper went to her head, and she turned around and went to leave.

"Don't turn away from me, miss," said her mother. "Get back in here and peel these. I have so much work to do today."
        
Martje went back in. She took a potato in her hand and dropped it, burning her finger, and tears pricked into her eyes. Her mother didn’t even warn her that the potatoes were hot.
        
As her heart began to swell with pride and hurt, and she planned on nursing these emotions at the table, she presently noticed something: Mrs. Svenson’s sleeves were rolled up - she never changed her habits for any reason - and she had four small bruises, purple-colored, on her upper arm.
        
"Mama,” she suddenly said softly, “Go rest."
        
"What, do you think I have time to rest? With all these children and you in the woods?" She sat down to shell peas at the table, and said nothing more, her hands going vigorously and her anger a palpable thing.
      
Martje picked apart the potatoes as fast as she could, popping them between her hands, not caring for her fingertips, and said,
        
"I'll go and check the eggs," not so much as to be helpful, but as to be relieved of her mother's fury.

She ran outside and to her dismay in the distance she saw her father walking jauntily along. He saw her, too, and she did not know whether to keep on walking. She did not want an interaction with him; at the same time, she craved it. She needed resolution and a soft word from him. It always came after eruptions.

“Marty!” - She loved his voice.

She stopped her motions to show she was attending.

“I love you!” he called.

Warmth flowed through her: the words her mother never said to her. She felt an urge in her towards her father, a surge in her heart that gravitated towards his body as he grinned, laughed, and hopped off. She was almost ashamed of her need for him.

“I love you, too!” she called after him.

She walked down the lane, trying to look lovable for his sake.


An hour later she came back from her walk, without eggs.

Coming down the sun-dappled lane, a bobbed-haired girl in a white-checkered dress  ran to her, holding a bouquet of wilting violets in her hot little fist, shouting, “Mummy! Mummy! These are for you!” “- Oh, they’re so beautiful, darling! They have fairy-faces!” Her husband, so tall and strong and brown-haired, was chopping wood. Where was she coming from? - the shop? Yes, she had a wicker basket over her arm, and brown sugar in a bag, and cinnamon, and a packet of sewing needles. Her husband met her at the gate, so sweaty and handsome, to put his arm around her waist and kiss her cheek chastely. And a curly-haired boy bounded up to show her a worm in his dirty, cupped palm - “Oh, my, that’s a big one, Johnny!” And then she went inside to see her baby Ruth, rocking in her cradle in a square of sunshine, the window open, blowing kisses of lilac onto her peach-fuzzed cheek.

“Where the hell have you been?” a voice broke through her dream. She looked up to see her father by the gate, catching her brother by the neck and pulling his collar down. She could hear their voices even from a distance away.

“What are you doing?” her brother ducked out from under their father’s grasp.

“Where are you coming from?”

“Just from down the river!”

“Is that a bruise on your neck? Is that from a girl?”

“No,” Olaf replied indignantly. “From a -” Then he froze.

“You don’t mean to say it’s from a - ? …Don’t you walk away from me! Look at me when I’m talking to you! Are you telling me a boy give that to you?”

“Lemme alone -”

“You let another boy kiss you?”

“You’re perverted! What the devil is wrong with you? Go to hell!” He scattered his body backwards, his narrow elbows jerking. His face was white. His father seemed panicked, too.

“Don’t walk away from me! Answer my question!”

“The fellas and I were horsing around. What is wrong with you, anyway?”

“So now you’re telling me you were fighting and allowed another man to hurt you.” He seemed relieved, but he rallied his anger again. “Where is your pride? Are you that weak, to not defend yourself when fighting? Calling me perverted - that’s what I think is perverted.”

“I don’t care what you think.”

“Oh, really? I’ll thrash you right now; see if you defend yourself or not.”

“Lemme alone,” said Olaf and ran away. (His father rarely carried out his threats anyway - he toed the line and avoided the bully label as much as possible.) The boy turned his run into a stalk by the time he reached Martje.

She tried to make it look like she hadn’t seen anything. Olaf shoved his shoulders up to move his collar against his neck. She looked down quickly at the sketchpad in her hand. A girl in a checkered dress danced across it; a man and a woman stood with their arms entwined about each other; a little yellow house was in the background. Olaf stopped when he saw her, somewhat surprised. He spoke sarcastically, but his voice was searching for consolation.

“The man’s an idiot.”

“Don’t say that.” - She instantly hated herself for her words.

“You’re unbelievable, Martje. Really, did you know that? You and the rest of this family.” He spat the word, and she didn’t like being lumped in with them.

“I’m hurting, too,” she wanted to say. But somehow no one could get out what they wanted to say.

He unfortunately then looked down at the drawing in her lap.

He laughed aloud. “Is that what you think life is?” he pointed to them. “That a girl is going to be all ‘Mummy dearest’ to you? …You’ll probably kill her in real life, or she’ll kill you first…which is exactly what I’m going to do to Dad if he doesn’t leave me alone.”

She knew who Olaf was, for when he was seven he had come to her and said, “Look, Martje! A sunset leaf!” with delight in his pupils, the broad fire shining brightly on his brown palm. And when he was nine he would crawl into bed with Martje and Hans, and once a moth flew in through the open window and settled on Han’s bare chest.

He brushed it off, and the moth scattered its gray soft feelings on his breast and left a mark.

And Olaf said, in a reverent tone, the one in which one only speaks of gods and fairies,

“The moth left angel dust on Han’s heart.”

She heard the glitter in his voice that few others did, but when it was gone, Olaf’s tone became acerbic like none other. And once he found out her dreams, her brother was relentless.

She was washing dishes and he came in for a jug of milk. He slushed it down and then rubbed his sleeve across his mouth and looked absently out the window.

“Oh, Rose, won’t you bring the daffodils in?”

Martje jumped and wondered who Rose was. And then she realized Olaf was speaking to her - though he kept his eyes trained on the window. His voice was higher pitched, like a woman’s.

“Just look at that rainbow! We can frolic in the meadows together, in our flowing white dresses, with flowers in our hair. We will have such a good time! And then, Rosie, we can bake a sugar cake and give it to your daddy. And at night we will all put on our frilly nightcaps and pray by our beds…and blow the candles out while the crickets chirp.”

She felt humiliated and ashamed, turning more and more red by the moment, as her dreams fell to shambles around her. She could not look at her desires seriously in the midst of his mocking tone.

“Do you really think,” he turned to her, “that you’re going to kneel by your bed and pray with your children? - all in their little white nightgowns?”

She felt defenseless, but she tried to grin sportingly as she dashed the rainbowy water from a bowl. “Why not? Sure and I can have whatever I want.”

He laughed - such an impish laugh he had - and walked off. It was his laugh that disarmed her false front of confidence entirely. She felt a fool.


Painting: "Farm Pond," William Lewis

Chapter One

Moguncoy, Massachusetts


HER DRESS was bayberry-wax-colored, but that wasn't her fault; and her eyes were purple, but that was her fault, for she had on her soul the caul of the other world. She stood on the threshold of her girlhood, with hands like doves. Throwing her fingers into flight, she cried out from the depths of her being,

“Oh, give it to me! I want it. I want this all.”

If people had known, they would have said,

"What is this that drops, hissing and blue to the ground, and lands among us, not extinguished, but vivid and hot?

"Let us kick it and hit it and hurt it and shut it up, for it sees too much and will say too much and it never must be allowed to open its mouth -”

This was in the farming village of Moguncoy, drab and vicious, with its spiked hills and the glorious spills of meadows.

So she stood on the edge of it and looked out upon a field as far as she could see, saying,

"Give it to me: all."

It was her tragedy and grace that she recalled how it felt, before she fell like a star among the plodders. She knew she was born awake, and she felt on her being the traces of that sac through which we pass when we break the ether: and she came still on fire. Only a few choose this way. Most assume amnesia, to remember gradually and less painfully. But others take another route, being born aware, and their way is sharp. They take their pain early and young, and their bliss is higher and their dreams broader and their ecstasy deeper, and they have the purple eyes.
     
Now, I do not mean that they were really that color: but I do not know what else to call a gaze that looks like it remembers better than you do. You would not call it something so kind, perhaps: I do not know what sort of heart you have.

Our language has no words for such things.


She made her way back through the velvet of Sagolandet. The sun drew out with its curled golden fingers the smell of damp earthworms and vernal pools. A wood thrush begged her to stay. Her supper would be cooked soon; she could see the yellow light between the hills. As she came into the untidy yard, the chickens scattered with a "thwock" and she smelled the pork hissing with protest on the stove.
     
In the kitchen, her mother stood by the iron range, her hand on her hip as always, pushing the flesh inward of her own back sharply.

Ingrid yelled down the stairs,

"The baby's crying!"

"Get him for me, Martje," said Mrs. Svenson, without turning around.

Martje threw a handful of periwinkle across the table; she took the steps two at a time, impatient for life, and scooped the infant up. His face was the color of mottled wine, and he was shaking.

"Don't cry, now, chickadee!"

Her sister came in, plaiting her hair.

"How long has Gerte been here?"

"I don't know; I just heard him."

"He is hungry," Martje said, melting him against her breast.

Martje carried him like a jewel downstairs and Gerte burst into fresh tears when he saw his mother. Mrs. Svenson turned from her cooking and reached for him. Mr. Svenson was sitting at the table.

"You barny women coddle him too much. Lookit this, another liten one on the way, and you're all treating him like a baby."

"He is a baby," said Ingrid, who had followed Martje down, tying off her rope. "He's only fourteen months."

"Don't talk back," snapped her father. "I had you all trained by that time. You could walk and didn't need nappies and slept clean-through the night - but this one, your mother is spoiling. And her, with another one coming," he said, indicating the swell under her apron as if it were her fault. Mrs. Svenson took Gerte onto her hip and stared fiercely into the pork. The baby buried his face in her shirt, as if he understood Mr. Svenson’s words and was taking solace against her breast. Ingrid herself looked as if she was going to cry: she usually did in such scenes, and Mr. Svenson always became incensed by her tears. He could not bear emotionalism because his mother had been a “hysterical woman” when he was growing up.

So Mrs. Svenson saved her by saying, "Go and feed the chickens, Ingrid."

Her lip quivered, and she fled through the kitchen door, her braid streaming out like a heroine’s, in Martje’s eyes, but not without letting Mr. Svenson see one or two tears.

"Sensitive women. Pah! Making pansies out of my boys."

Mrs. Svenson did not deign to acknowledge his vicious and self-righteous tone, but Martje could see the anger trembling just beneath the bluish surface of her cheek. She had screwed her jawbone into solid rock, and Martje sensed that the situation was precarious. So she arranged the bouquet of periwinkles, poking it with her hands, watching surreptitiously every flick of her father’s eye - which was trailing her mother’s lumbering elephant-like movements - and gauged every pulse of the vein on his neck, with nervousness. She needed to preside over their tension, doing what she could to alleviate it, and to make sure that none of her siblings stumbled into the battle arena themselves… if this happened, she would whisk them away, with a magical speed, and deposit them safely in Sagolandet, or plunk them upstairs and adjure them not to move from their blocks, before she returned to the scene. But because Mrs. Svenson was shoving the peppercorns onto the slab and refused to talk, there was silence.

Finally, "- Can I help with anything, Mama?" Martje asked, wondering if her voice would bring normality to the kitchen atmosphere. "Peeling potatoes?" But it was an unfortunate choice of words, because,

"I have so much to do that it doesn't matter what you do," her mother said airily, and Martje understood, immediately and unhappily, that she was not speaking to her.

But Mr. Svenson was overjoyed. "Jea, go ahead and peel those potatoes, Martje. Your mother has ‘so much to do’ because she coddles that kid. If she didn't jump at his every whimper and let him interrupt her work all the time, and made him eat proper meals with the family, maybe she could have supper on the table at a decent hour like other women.” Martje felt her father’s pleasure at being provided an opportunity to erupt, because, for all her father was a bully, he did not like to be a senseless one: he preferred to be provoked. But what he accepted as provocation was anything.

“Here she is, harping on me for her hard life, but if she’d only listen to me about raising the barn, maybe she’d be able to relax a little. But no, Martje, she won't let me train him. And he's going to suffer in life because of it - just like we do right now! I am suffering. I’m hungry, Martje - I wanted my dinner an hour ago! And she’s just going to feed the baby. Do you know how many hours I work in our fields, Martje? Those fields that feed you and your brothers and sisters? And I bet you sympathize with your mother! - you and Ingrid both. You women always stick together, don’t you?” he sneered.

Even though he had not moved from the table, and his clenched hand was resting harmlessly on the wood, Martje leaned backwards against the sink. Was she expected to respond to her father? She only looked at her flowers, feeling miserable with guilt for escalating the situation instead of calming it, and Mrs. Svenson, at the stove near her - was she on the side of her mother? - muttered something under her breath that did not sound like English.

"Just listen to that woman’s beastly language!" laughed Mr. Svenson. "Using language like that in front of your daughter? You know what, give him to me," he said in inspiration, standing up, his chair squeaking backwards.

"No," said Mrs. Svenson, turning her body away, and Martje became almost senseless at this turn of events.

Mr. Svenson drew back at her refusal - but it was only the recoiling of a snake, to lash again.

"Spoiling!" he hissed. "Making my boys mollycoddles. Give him to me and I'll make him a man."

“I will walk out that door before I ever give him to you.”

"I'm not going to hurt him!"

“You still can’t have him.”

“Where is a father’s authority in this place?” He lurched forward.

"Stop it, Axel," said Mrs. Svenson.

“Just give him to me,” he said, his gurgling tone suddenly, in Martje’s ears, sounding like a moping boy whose mother will not give him a sweet.

“I said no.”

"A boy's place is with his father!"

"A baby’s is with his mother and you'd better leave or I'm leaving. I will leave the house this very instant."

"It's my goddamn right to hold him! Give him to me!"

"Leave!" she said, and she picked up the fork and pointed it at him.

He froze, stunned at her words and action.

His shock only lasted a moment and then rage filled his eyes.

"A woman thinks she can tell me where to go in my own house?" filling up his chest with air. Martje wondered what was about to happen and didn't know who was going to strike first, but she knew this was the inevitable conclusion. She couldn't think that violence would transpire with such a tender baby in her mother's arms, but she was unsure, so she readied herself to take the infant, or to put herself in front of her mother, and her head went unsteady, and she also considered calling for Wilfred, like she had done once before…but that one time actually resulted a physical fight between father and son instead.

Mr. Svenson stuck his neck forward aggressively. "Think you can push your husband around like that?"

"I can if you're in this state, and I will. You don’t deserve to be here. Look at the way you’re acting in front of your daughter!"

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."      

"You know what I’m talking about."

"Tell me."

In a quieter voice, she said, “- Drunk.”

There was a dreadful silence.

Mr. Svenson looked at his daughter, and she could not look back at him. Her mother had never said such a word aloud.

In a burst of movement, that almost hurt Martje, strangely enough, with the despair of it, Mr. Svenson lunged past her, out the door, and did not come home for supper.

Mrs. Svenson turned again to the stove, limply staring at the pork.

"Alright, finish this for me, Martje," she said at last. "I'll go and feed Gerte." And she walked away, unbuttoning her shirt.


That night it only got worse. He had to repay his wife for the shame in the kitchen. He came home while the children were in bed, stumbled up the stairs, and forced his way into her mother’s room. Martje, who was tucking the two-year old into her trundle in the room next door, could hear vaguely his taunting voice through the wall, but not make out what he was saying.

"Do you want to hear a song?" she whispered to Signe.

"Yeth!"

Just then, her mother burst into screams. This usually happened when she could not take the jeering anymore. Martje imagined Mr. Svenson had been leaning over her in bed, saying, "Mollycoddle, mollycoddle...oh, wittle baby," or something quite similar, because she had heard such taunting often, and as far as Martje knew, her mother was cursing in Swedish now.

“Alright. Which one, sugar?”

"Why mama yellth?" Signe asked instead.
     
It was dark but she guessed the babyish forehead was puckered with concern between her feathery eyebrows. So Martje made her tone easy.

"Oh, she's just...a little upset right now. She is tired because she is going to have another baby. But she will be better in the morning. Don't worry. She and Papa love each other very much." Signe was easily convinced by her older sister's farce, and Martje stroked her face. "Now, which lullaby do you want?" She heard a crash and startled, and she desperately wished she knew where her other siblings were, especially Hans, because he was quiet but a very sensitive seven-year old, no doubt listening to this, curled up in bed. Why couldn't Martje be in two places at once? Why couldn’t she protect everyone?

"Thov Gott!" the two-year old lisped.

"Sov Gott, Vackra Delfin? (lullaby) Ja! I love that one, too." Her voice sounded as if they were having a picnic of golden apples and honey on the Elysian plains. She stretched herself across the bed, leaning her arms on either side of her sister. She would make a fortress about her, and she began to sing, as the crashes increased and repeated, wondering if Hans would ever forgive her for choosing Signe:

"Sov gott, vackra delfin,
Sov gott; jag vita varg..."

"Sleep well, beautiful dolphin,
Sleep well; I, white wolf..."

She gradually gathered, by the sounds outside, that her father had run out of the room and was holding the door closed against her mother who had been slamming herself against it. Now Mrs. Svenson was wailing and wringing the doorknob on the other side. In her mind’s eye, Martje could see her pregnant body leaning against and sinking down in defeat against the door.

With her voice, Martje wove a web of defense above her sister's head, and it was the hardest thing she had ever done - making her tone smooth and steady and sweet and warm, in spite of the sounds, in spite of the fact that her own insides were crumbling like wet sand.

"Let me out," Mrs. Svenson was saying - again and again. “Let me out -” until the babbling became sobbing: so defenseless, so frighteningly uncharacteristic: the warrior reduced to a pitiful void.

And Martje made those magical threads impenetrable.

"Vi har kärlek för varandra,
För varandra,
För alltid."

"We have love for each other,
For each other,
Forever."

Soon Signe was asleep. If she would wake up in the night and cry, Martje would get out of bed, climb into Signe’s cot, and wrap her arms around her, like the sea engulfs the shore.

Martje stood in the middle of her dark room: the house was now silent, but it was an uneasy silence. She pulled Signe's big floppy doll out of her toy chest. It was almost half Martje’s height, and she lay down in her bed and put the doll behind her, wrapping the stuffed arms around her body.

"He loved his wife," she thought. “He came in from the barn and saw her cooking and he said, ‘Drop all that, and let’s go run in the fields. Let’s have a picnic on the hill - all we need is cheese and apples - where we can see the pink sunset. And after that, we will capture fireflies in a jar, and put it next to our bed. And I will sing to you. I will sing you to sleep…”

She pulled the doll’s arms tighter, squeezing them against her back, and turned her face into her pillow.


Painting: "Meadow," Lucas Robiquet