Chapter Nine

“Martje!”

“What?”

“C’mere.”

A tin pail clanking against her leg, she walked over to her father, standing by the red barn wall.

“Pignuts?” Mr. Svenson asked, casually.

“Jea.”

“I have something for you.”

“Oh? - What is it?”

“You have to follow me.”

“Can you bring it right here? I..have to take these inside.”

“I can’t. It’s in the barn. Come on now, Marty…” 

He must have noticed her hesitation.

“It will only take a second.”

“I don’t want it!” she suddenly exclaimed.

“- What? You will once you see what it is.”

The most grotesque image had flashed through Martje’s mind: she saw herself being led into a small stall and -

“Really,” urged Mr. Svenson. “You don’t want to miss this.”

“I mean…I mean I don’t need anything right now.”

“But it’s for you.” He had that look where he was light on his feet and not in his body. “…It’s a prize for you.” 

He turned, and she, powerlessly, followed him into the barn. She felt trapped, and thought it would have been more dangerous to resist.

“Keep walking.” He pranced ahead, his body and elbows jerking uncoordinatedly. His mouth was red, his skin strangely yellowed. 

No one else was in there. Hans was gone, Ingrid and Mrs. Svenson were out of sight.

“It’s just over this way… we’re getting closer. Are you excited?”

“Yes,” she lied.

He led her deep into the back of the barn. All the way down to the end where there were no exit or window. Every hair on her body pricked.

“Can’t you just tell me what it is?”

“It wouldn’t be a surprise then…would it?” 

They got to the last stall and he turned to it. He unlatched the door and swung it open on its hinges. “Go inside,” pushing his hand on her back.

Everything in her body did not want to obey, but her leg moved forward, and then the other, and he followed her and closed the door.

“Look at it.” 

There, on the hay, lay a sweet young thing.

His hand still on her back, he whispered, “It’s yours. He’s all yours.” 

The horse, roused by the intrusion, rustled on the hay and nickered gently.

“What -?” breathed Martje, kneeling slowly down. It did not seem possible. She put her hand out to touch its fairy nose. It was nothing like Invader. This creature was small and delicate.

“Do you like it? It’s just over fifteen hands, so its almost pony sized.” He was looking at her eagerly, expectantly. “What do you think?”

“It…must be too expensive.”

“Bah.” He whooshed his hand. “That’s not - that’s for me, not for you, to worry about.”

She was staring deep into the liquid brown eyes of the gentle creature. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Do you want him?”

Uncomfortably - “Jea.”

“Alright then, he’s yours. You can name him… you can ride him. You can tell all the other children that he’s no one but yours.”

“I wish - Mama -”

“She can’t ride; she’s too big.”

“But, more than me -”

“No, you should learn to ride and to - feel more confident doing it. You deserve a small pony. Not that big lumbering thing. He’s too violent, I’m afraid. This one will…be just perfect for you.” He put his hand on the round belly of the animal. “I picked him out for you myself. I thought you would like him.”

“I do; I do so much.”

“I was afraid you’d be hurt that night.”

“I wasn’t. I can do it fine enough.” 

“But here’s a nice one for you. This one won’t buck or anything. I want a gentle mount for my girl. You deserve it. You do so much for this family.”

“No. No. It’s fine.”

“Well, anyway,” he said. “It’s your reward.”

“Thank you, Papa,” she said. Her hands were cupping the velvety nose, pink as a rosebud. 

“I think I failed you all again,” he said. “I’m going to stop.”

“You’re fine enough,” she said.

Martje could not make eye contact; the stall with its splintered pine walls felt a prison.

“No, no. Förbannelser på mig. Your mother…I don’t know how she puts up with me. I’m so glad you all…came back. She’s a good woman - any good you have in you comes from her. Always be like her, if you can. Don’t follow my example.”

“Well, either way…” she trailed off.

“Jea. Doesn’t matter. …You’re right.”

Perhaps both did not know what they were talking about.

“Thanks for this,” she forced out with difficulty.

“Well. Your papa’s always looking out for you, you see. You don’t think so, but he is. Always.” He walked away out of the stall. He closed the door and leaned his hand on the edge. “Enjoy that. He’s only yours.”

“I don’t know what to name him,” she said, quickly, before he went.

“Anything. It’s up to you.”

“But what?”

“Oh, I don’t know - maybe after the stars. Orion. Or a god - Magni. Or a flower. Though I suppose male horses…”

“Jea,” she laughed.

"Or a writer or a thinker."

"Emerson! Thoreau!"

"- How do you know those names?"

"Your bookshelf."

"Oh. Read them?"

"No."

“Huh. Well. You’ll figure one out,” and left.

---

The next day he saddled the pony: he had even bought a saddle for her, carved with flowers in the leather, and a new bridle, because Invader’s tack were the trappings of a giant. This was delicate. Her heart was overcome.

“You mustn’t be afraid,” he said, as he gave her a leg up. 

But she wasn’t. She felt a different energy from this animal as she wrapped her legs around his body. 

“I know those didn’t go well, your lessons with your mama. But she is too gruff sometimes. That is all. Now, trot to that stump and back. There we go! Look at you. You’re taking to each other well. Didn’t I pick a good one? See, Martje, what you need to do is think about what you do with confidence. This is your writing mount. Your painting steed. See? Or imagine a time when you felt sure of yourself. Like when you were wearing your party dress and your white boots, picking flowers for me at four. You’re in your party dress. Now you are! See? He knows you feel safe.”

Ingrid came and stood up on the fence.

“Ingrid!” called Mr. Svenson. “Do you like our new pony? You can ride it,” he said, “if Martje says so.”

“Of course,” said Martje, horrified.

“I don’t like horses anyway,” said Ingrid, and turned and hopped down and left.

---

“You can have anything you want to have,” Mr. Svenson told her as she rode around the edge of the corn field. 

“I know!”

They had to raise their voices as they spoke to each other.

“Except you have to be realistic.”

“I want to write and paint!” she yelled in joy, her hair streaming as the pony rolled fluidly underneath her.

“Well, that might not be realistic,” he said. “It’s doable, but not all day long. You can do it, because you’re good at it, but you have to always let it be something on the side…you know, as a little hobby, Martje. See, you have a desire to be married.”

She blushed. “Ju.”

“Well, there, see. It’s not possible to do both. You’re going to have to put your husband and your children first, just like he will put you and your children first. You know?” He lifted his voice in the wind.

The sky was blue, and cloudless above them, and her pony was white and black and magical underneath her, and Martje saw an amber birch, spraying up in the woods. The air was alive.

“Jea,” she said. 

---

Coming in from another lollop on Magni, Martje was singing. She walked into the house through the back door - but she stopped in the hall, for she felt at once the crackling electricity. She could hear her parents’ voices in the kitchen: hissing and strangulated.

“- And you don’t care about this at all! Do you, kvinna?”

“You’re a child. Go out to the fields. If you can, you shouldn’t be coddled.”

“…So I could be dying, and you wouldn’t mind. Would you?”

Martje could not hear her mother’s reply. 

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Well, when I thought you were dying - my heart broke. Don’t you think I care about you?”

Then her mother erupted, her voice still low: “You don’t. You don’t. I hate you. I hate you. Don’t you understand what you put me through? - the children through? I would be relieved. I knew it the moment I married you. You’re -”

This and that and this and that. Martje could not make out the words, but they were poisonous adjectives. She crept up the stairs and tightened herself into a ball in the corner of her room. She tried to put the doll over her, but it did not work.

---

She was prancing along with an armful of rhubarb the next day, always as if nothing had happened. 

Her hair hopped in two red braids down her back, and though her skirt was the color of a feed bag, her sweater, her deliciously warm sweater, was nutmeg-spice. It made her think of the scent of hickory smoke in the air, and pumpkin-colored leaves, and she loved it. She thought it looked well on her and she had dreamed many an autumn dream in it. She had worn it for years.

“Thanks for the rhubarb,” said Mrs. Svenson. “Would you get me that blue bowl up top?”

She reached and felt restrained.

“Oh! I think this is too small,” Martje said. “Maybe I’ve grown out of it.”

“Did you buy it or knit it?” asked Mr. Svenson.

“It was bought.”

“That’s why. They make sweaters tight nowadays. Do you know why?”

“Why?” She felt immediately uneasy at the aggressive twinkle in his eye.

“It is to draw attention to the breast.” 

“Oh.” She did not know where to look. 

“Men like that.”

“Axel,” said Mrs. Svenson.

She was too ashamed to even unbutton.

“Don’t bother the girl. Now she’s not going to wear it anymore.” 

“Good. It was too tight and that’s plain to be seen.”

“Go and get a stalk or two more, Martje.”

“Jea, Mama.”

“No, come back here for a moment.”

“Leave her be.”

“I just want to tell her a thing or two… would you, woman? She’s going to be going out into the world anyway. She ought to know. Martje, you know you’re growing up. You can’t run in the woods forever. I know you have your pony, you’re enjoying life…”

“She has time!”

“Not a lot. A few years.”

“You were the one who encouraged her…”

“I’m trying to have a conversation with my daughter. Now, you’re going to have to think about your future sooner or later. There will be a husband, marriage, children. It’s not so many years away. Jea, enjoy your time as a girl, but very shortly you will be a woman. It’s already starting.”

Martje felt imbibed with wrongness. It was her fault she was becoming a woman; it was her fault that men might stare at her chutney-colored chest.

“Are you ready to take up the responsibilities? Are you ready to be a woman, and learn to be responsible, and controlled, and upstanding, and modest -”

“For God’s sake, Axel! She still plays with dolls.”

“…Do you?”

“…Jea.”

He paused, fiddling.

“Alright, go on and get your mother her stalks.”

“I don’t need it, now I think of it. Go and do what you like.”

Martje ran off, but she heard -

“- putting fear in her -”

“- do you know what men think about nowadays?”

- and she ran as fast as she could, but there was no place to run. Even Sagolandet would not hold her. She knew this.

---

“Papa!” 

She heard her scream break out from her body. 

It had been a few days since the baby was born - or perhaps it had been yesterday, or two weeks ago. She was wet and united, one, with the straw-stuffed mattress and could not distinguish her body from it. She was going up and down, as if on a salty sea of fire. 

“Papa!” 

Or perhaps they were not yells. Jea, they were hoarse croaks, weak calls that would not bring help. She lay there, unable to call again.

But her door opened and light flooded her room.

“Marty? Marty!”

A candle was set down on the bedstand.

She tried to sit up, but her hand felt like it was tied to the mattress.

Her head, lifted an inch, dropped like a detached rock back into the pillow.

“What’s happening to me?” she gasped.

“You have a fever - you’ve had it for several days. It’s alright. Shh.”

Mr. Svenson put a broad, cupped hand lightly above her forehead. Her hair was wet.

“Do you want water?”

She began to turn from side to side.

“No. No.”

“Martje, what are you doing -”

“I can’t breathe.”

“Why are you breathing like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Marty, what’s going on?” 

“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”

“Marty, stop it. Breathe in deeply -”

“Papa!”

“Breathe in. Follow me. En, två, tre, fyra -”

“I can’t feel my feet - My hands - they’re closed, see - I can’t open them - My face: my face is freezing up -”

“Oh, my God.” Mr. Svenson broke down. “Marty!” He put his head in her breast, and Martje’s fingers went into his hair and curled around the red locks, tightly. She grabbed onto to it as if it was the only anchor left in the world for her.

“What is happening?” she said.

“What am I going to do?”  

She arched her back, stretching the skin across her chest and bones even tighter, prickling, unbearably tight. She hadn’t noticed Signe get up and patter down the hall. But soon a hand brushed Mr. Svenson aside and was placed on Martje’s chest.

“What is going on?”

“My lungs are closing, Mama. I can’t get air!”

“God, you’re fine, Martje. It’s just hysterics. Look at me. You’re fine. The worst that is going to happen is that you will faint. Look at me. You understand? That is the worst, and nothing more. You’re not dying. Now light those candles. Look at me.” She sat on the bed and looked deep into her daughter’s eyes, one hand on her daughter’s chest 

“Rub it - rub my hands -”

“If you insist. Papa, you do that. Jea, Martje. Count with me - en, två -”

“I need the doctor!”

“If you needed the doctor, would I be sitting here? Now breathe with me.”

“Get - the doctor,” she gasped.

“I’m going right now, Olga,” said Mr. Svenson.

“In and out.”

“S-something’s -”

“Papa’s gone to get the doctor now.”

“- wrong -” 

“If it’s so difficult, why don’t you pass out, Martje? Give in - you’re fighting it so much.”

“Nej. Nej. Nej.”

Her breathing slowed a trifle. By the time the doctor arrived, she was breathing evenly, but was otherwise lifeless.

“What caused it?” asked Mr. Svenson, as the doctor was putting away his smelling salts.

“A weak constitution,” he said, folding up his stethoscope. “Normal.”

“Normal?”

“For a female adolescent, yes.”

“But there was nothing -”

“Hysterical episodes are innocuous and mean nothing. Just keep her quiet and undisturbed. It is her fever I am concerned about. If it does not break in two days, send for me.”

He left and her parents stood there in the flickering candle.

Martje’s head ached.

“Do you both think I’m mad?” she croaked.

“No,” said Mrs. Svenson. “You just have a lot to learn in being calm.” The infant screamed in the next room. “Ring the bell if you need anything.”

Mr. Svenson was left alone. He looked down at her gently.

“But do you think I am?” she whispered.

He smiled. “If you’re mad, Martje, then what am I?”

She could not help smiling.

“You will be fine in the morning. I promise.”

---

She was, and returned to school in only a week, feeling chipper and renewed, as one does who thinks she has come back from the brink of death. Brita was glad to see her, and waved two papers in the air. “I’m jolly you’re back! You have to save me. We got our science debate results back, and we would have had a perfect score, but she took off ten marks for when we giggled.” 

“I don’t believe it,” said Martje, snatching her paper. “I couldn’t help it, when that child asked me where the groin was -! Jea, right here: ‘Lack of sobriety’, she writes. Sorceress!” 

At lunch outside, they had a horse race under the fall leaves, and the older children who were game volunteered to be the horses, while the younger ones rode on the backs.

“Pick it up, won’t you?” roared one chubby Dutch boy, hitting his mount with a hickory twig, and his horse bucked. “Where did you get that?” yelped the steed, unsaddling him fully. “How would you like it if your horse -” and threateningly swiped but the rider upended and ran. The others pairs charged ahead, though many beasts neighed as their knees became imprinted with nut shells. Martje was duly impressed, but she only laughed in gurgling delight, a light child on her back.

“Faster, faster!” her girl kicked.

“I lay a shilling on the black stallion!” cheered a bystander.

“I bet two on that chestnut mare!” shouted another, cupping his hands around his mouth.

“They think we’ll win!” shrieked her jockey.

Martje bent her head and ploughed forward heartily - but then something strange happened. 

She was under the spreading oak tree, neck and neck with four of the best, when she suddenly felt like time was slowing down. She continued to laugh, and kept putting her hands and knees down in a forward motion, but her world began to gradually progress in a tick…tick…tick fashion, like a clock that needs to be wound, and is slowly dying.

“Move!” screamed her girl, inserting her bony knees into Martje’s stomach. “They're gaining on us!”

Others passed them easily. Her patron groaned: “What are you doing, Martje? Pluck up!”

Shame flooded her, and she gathered whatever strength she had in her to plough ahead - but she was pushed violently back, as if her hands and knees were suddenly deep in dank mire. She looked down and saw only nut-studded grass, clean and free. What was going on? She looked up in panic. She had to get to that finish line. 

Like a fool, she put one hoof in front of the other, with great, deliberate effort. In what felt like an eternity, she reached the end, at last, and bowed down. Her child slid off. The girl pouted indignantly: “I’m riding Peter next time.”

Martje turned over and sat, arms dangling over her elbows. What had just happened? she wondered helplessly. 

Brita ran over.

“Did you see that?” asked Martje.

“No - what?”

“I couldn’t move.” 

“Aw, that’s alright. Your girl was too heavy.”

“No. She wasn’t at all.”

“- Are you sick again?”

“No, I feel perfectly fine.”

“Oh - well. Maybe the race was harder than you thought. Come on, let’s go sit with the others under the oak.”

As they walked over, and Martje’s jockey stamped past her once more. “What happened to you?” she asked grumpily, wiping dirt off her mouth. “You were so good and then you popped.”

“I really don’t know what happened. I’m sorry.”  

Brita laughed. “Are you going to be humiliated by a six-year old?” But Martje felt it. 

She went home, and that night she had a spiked fever. The doctor came and went, briefly, leaving a note with instructions. She had had undiagnosed mononucleosis.

Painting: "Forest of Beech Trees", Gustav Klimt

Chapter Eight

The moon had not made her travels half-way across the sky before Martje woke again with a start. 

She wondered if the strange noise she had heard was the wind moaning, or a child dreaming. She lay in bed as still as possible and listened. There was nothing.

But ten minutes later, there was the sound again.

She flung off her covers and ran down the stairs.

“Mama! Are you hurt?”

“…No,” her mother said spitefully, still in the rocking chair by the stove. Signe lay asleep on a coat on the floor. “Don’t wake her.”

Martje whispered, “I thought I heard - something.” 

“Well, it must have been one of the children,” she said. “Go back to bed.”

Before Martje turned to climb the stairs again, she saw her mother freeze up, bend over slightly, and grip her chair.

“No, no,” said Martje, coming back to her. “You are hurt.”

“…Labor isn’t an injury, Martje,” said Mrs. Svenson, after a minute. Her hand released and she leaned back in the chair again. “Go back to bed.”

“Isn’t it too early for this?” 

“Just two weeks - but I may have calculated wrong.”

“Do you want me to go get Addah?” 

“Not yet. But we’d better go back to the house.”

“It must be two,” said Martje, looking at the moon.

“This baby could be here by sun-up. Both Signe and Gerte were fast…”

“But what about -”

“- By this time your father will have cooled down. I know his moods, Martje. He always regrets these episodes.”

“And he wouldn’t do anything with the midwife in the house,” admitted Martje. “And he’s probably dead-asleep right now. Can you walk?”

“I’m not dying.” Mrs. Svenson stood up with an ease that surprised her daughter. “Don’t be such a goose. You know, I was ploughing right up until the moment my first two were born. I can walk as long as we stop when - it - comes.”

Martje was loathe to wake the children up, but presently the bizarre crowd was cutting through cold fields by moonlight, their mother stopping every ten minutes or so to sit on a rock or log - to rest, as she said; her second daughter holding the stub of a stolen candle aloft. In those moments Mrs. Svenson was quiet, squeezing her eyes shut. 

Then she’d open them.

“Jea, let’s keep going.”

Ingrid once put her hand on her mother’s shoulder, while she sat on an overturned bucket in the hay field, and rubbed it, but she said,

“No need, Ingrid - mind the wax,” and stood in a minute. Even Sagolandet looked eerie to Martje, with its tangles of cobwebby branches and shadows that were forever moving and dancing against the deep-blue sky.

The house was black and silent when they reached it, with no lights lit. They entered it, all hushed, and Ingrid ushered the children to their bedrooms while Martje laid Gerte, warm and heavy with sleep, in the cradle by the hearth. Mrs. Svenson, blowing out her breath, slowly sat on a chair. 

“Get Addah, Martje,” she said.

“Should I run? Can I get you anything before I go?”

“You’re acting like the barn’s on fire. Don’t run. This isn’t an emergency. Take the lantern. Tell her she doesn’t have to hurry. Take the lantern that’s by the front door, and go by the main road. Don’t go cutting through the fishing village.”

“Jea. I’ll be back shortly.”

“Not by the fishing village - I’m in earnest, Martje.”

“Jea.”

Martje lit two lamps in the kitchen, put a cup of water by her mother’s elbow, lit the lantern, and was out the door. The main road did not frighten her as much as she thought it would. The air was crisp and cool and comforting. Addah lived less than a mile away, by the lake. Martje was thrilling with the importance and the drama of it all, and fear did not seem to coincide with those emotions. They just didn’t fit in her body. 

She did feel awkward knocking on the door, but Addah, the village midwife, was used to nocturnal visitations, and soon they were speeding on their way, the old woman not talking, except to ask a few questions, and soon they were in the lighted Svenson kitchen.

Now that she could see better, the old woman’s face looked, to Martje, like a carved pumpkin that had withered: the apples of her cheeks were more pronounced because the skin below them were caved-in like the rind of the gourd. In a raspy voice she chirruped, “Well, then, Olga - let’s get this show on the road!” and she forthrightly squeaked chairs across the floor and clanged the iron kettle and the rattle sounded ominously loud to Martje, and she wanted to tell her to be quiet.

Mr. Svenson came fumbling out of the bedroom into the hall, his nightshirt open, his reddish chest unashamedly showing, his hair awry. He stared at Addah with fright.

“Why are you here?” he said confusedly. “What’s happened?” 

Addah did not respond - which Martje found dispossessing  

“This is my family. Who is hurt?” white-eyed.

“No one is hurt,” said Addah sternly. “Your wife is in labor.”

The midwife’s hand on her back, Mrs. Svenson walked slowly passed her husband.

“Oh.” He looked at his wife with an expression in his eyes, which Martje - painfully - could not interpret. He turned and went into the kitchen, and Mrs. Svenson and Addah went by themselves into the bedroom and shut the door. 

“Go to sleep,” instructed Mrs. Svenson to her daugther before the door was closed.

But the sleep fairy was not her friend that night. Martje carried Gerte’s cradle into her room, and then she continually went to peer around the corner at her parents’ bedroom. Her father had dragged a chair down the hall and sat in front of the door, seeming, to Martje, for all like a dog by a grave. He was there every time she looked, in the shadows - for five hours - until the sun was up, and then he was gone: the first orange light licking the empty chair. 

She got up, too, and dressed with a groggy head, and clothed the children, and made porridge. 

“What’s going on in there?” asked Hans.

“The stork is coming,” bubbled Ingrid.

“Can he not get in the window or something?” 

“These things take a long time,” said Martje.

“Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?” said Ingrid.

“Good question. I want to know if I’m a brother or a sister yet.”

As the sun climbed higher in the sky, there began to boil in the house an air of discontent and uneasiness - at least in the air of the adults. The bedroom was silent. Martje saw Addah puffing on a pipe on the front porch. Mr. Svenson stayed out of the house the entire day, and Martje carried him his meals in the barn. He would not talk. 

Evening came. The eldest daughter brought everyone supper, then put the children to bed. She lay with Gerte and then Signe and then Hans until they fell asleep.

Night spread over the land, and again Mr. Svenson pulled a chair forlornly by the door. But he did not stay there long. When darkness fully cloaked the farm - the moon was hidden by clouds - he got up and went walking around the kitchen - Martje could hear him: they were the footsteps of someone who does now know where he is going - and then he went out of the house. 

Two hours later, she found him, asleep, slumped halfway down a chair by the hearth. His head was lolled to one side, like a rotted tree.

“Martje,” said Addah, coming out into the kitchen. 

She started and turned around. She didn’t know why her heart-rate was up.

“Jea?” she said.  - A dank smell of yeast emanated from her father.

Addah looked at them both. “Is all well?” she asked. She appeared like a witch to Martje - with her tight gray hair in a small knot, and her thin forearms, the skin pulling away only showing the ropy old muscles.

“Of course it is. Everyone is just tired with all of this.” She was small but she stood in front of her father. She felt like her mother with her bruises out, and felt strangely threatened. She looked at the midwife with eyes of steel and dared her to ask more. 

“Yes, well,” said the midwife, “you’d better ask your pa to get the doctor in town.”

“Is it bad?”

“Just tell your pa.”

Martje walked with trepidation and looked at Mr. Svenson. She knew she couldn’t wake him up. Even if she could, that Irishman had the cart! And her father could not ride: not in this state. But she could not either. And she could walk in time: the doctor lived at least five miles away. She went back to the hall, and then back to the kitchen, and then back to the hall again.

She ran into Addah. 

“Is he off?” asked the midwife.

“He can’t go,” said Martje, her brain working fast. “He’s…”

“Then you have to,” cut off Adah.

“Can you?” 

The resistance in her was smothering the reasoning part of her brain. She felt exactly as though she were standing on the edge of a one-hundred foot cliff, and someone were pushing her from behind, and her entire body was pushing back, even against her will.

“I have to stay with your ma.”

She was ashamed of her own words. “But that’s all the way in - I can’t - I’m -” 

“You’re a farm girl,” said Addah. “That’s what you are. I’ve never heard of one who hain’t been astride a horse before.”

“I can’t,” whispered Martje. Then - “Alright,” she said, and went out.

She slid open the barn door and was greeted by the scent of musk and hay, but she was not comforted. She could steal keys and run through forests, but she knew she met her match in Invader. The chestnut thoroughbred, with his glossy, rippling muscles, was a beast to her. The top of her strawberry head barely reached his shoulder. His spirit was against her, too. Her mother, a horse-lover, had tried to teach her daughter to ride, and Invader, on her first try, spooked by a sparrow, had tossed her. Though that shook her, it was an accident: it did not undercut her confidence as much as his daily, more ordinary, proofs of her incompetence did.

“You look like a bird perched up there. Sit deeper. Sit deeper! …Why did you just make him stop?” challenged her mother, as Martje, clinging to the broad flanks, was perched atop the motionless horse, his nose square against a gate.

“I didn’t make him stop!” she protested. “He did it himself.”

“He absolutely did not. You have full power.”

“I don’t,” she protested. Her mother did not understand.

“You have to make him do what you want him to do.”

All her insides felt loose. “I can’t,” said Martje. “- I can’t.”

“Don’t be a fool! - you can.”

It was their only try at a mother-daughter venture, and they did not attempt it again.

Invader stomped his hoof when she entered his stall.

“Sh-h,” she whispered. “C’mere, fella.” She would not go for his nose like her mother would. Mrs. Svenson, when she was by herself, rubbed up against the horse like he was her lover. Martje had never seen her touch a human being like that before. It horrified her the way her hand slid into his mouth and felt around his heaving nostrils. Those yellowed, ribbed teeth - those flecks of green on his inhuman pink tongue! His ability to chop off one’s finger as easily as a carrot! And Invader’s roving eye… There was nothing lovable in him, Martje knew. But Mrs. Svenson did not seem to know. 

“Who is a beauty?” her daughter heard her murmur. “Who is a handsome man… who is a velvet prince?”

“Hullo, fella,” said Martje, gingerly slipping a halter over Invader’s head. She led him out and tacked him up - because she did know how to, being a farmer’s daughter - saying, “Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear,” when sliding the bit in. “Please take it - please,” and he did, then chomping on it pensively, and she snapped her fingers back as fast as possible.

She turned a crate over, climbed up, and mounted. She gathered up the reins and leaned over and whispered,

“Please - please be good - if not for me, for the woman you love.”

She nudged him forward and they clopped out of the barn, the echoes of his hooves ricocheting against the walls. She barely even felt like her legs were around him - he was as wide as barrel stave. They left the barn and she swayed side to side, the saddle creaking ominously. Once they made it down to the front lane, she knew she’d have to go faster, so she swallowed and urged him into a timid trot. He had a rough gait: she jolted around and it rattled her teeth. But soon he slowed again, down into a dragging walk.

“Come on - no, no, you must,” she begged, giving him a squeeze and then a gentle kick. She could never be harsh, though she felt as if her boots were meeting a rock wall. “Please, Invader. You must.” She jingled her reins, and then flopped them. She began to fume, slapping her legs against him, bouncing up and down in her seat. “You must, you must, you must!” She felt like a windmill and was close to tears. She made so much fuss on his back that perhaps he got no more fun out of provoking her, and figured if he began moving she would still her irritating arms and legs. He reluctantly began to trot again. 

She then sat as still as she could, kept pressure on his body with her legs, and he was persuaded to break into a canter - either that, or he just wanted to unnerve her, because his canter was long and fast, and the road stretched out wide and empty in front of them for miles. She could just imagine him going off into an open field on either side, or taking off into the woods, but by squeezing everything in her body - willpower, lungs, fingers twisted in his mane - somehow she kept him to the course, and by the time she got to the doctor’s house, she dismounted and her knees nearly buckled. She caught her breath and tried to quell her shaking. “My m-mama needs you,” she said, as the doctor answered the door.

“Is she hurt?” he asked in alarm.

“No, she’s having a b-b-baby.”

“You poor girl,” said the doctor, and he put Invader away in his barn and took Martje back in the hack. 

They rapidly arrived at the Svenson household and the doctor went immediately into the bedroom; Martje followed.

The doctor examined Mrs. Svenson, then he said,

“I’m not sure why this is happening. You said you were out walking this past night, yes? …I think you should not have walked while in labor.”

Her mother’s voice was a disturbing shadow of its normal substance, but its tone was acerbic as ever, and Martje was actually proud of her:

“Don’t be ridiculous. When I had my first two children, I ploughed the earth right up until the day they were born.”

“You have less strength than you think, Mrs. Svenson. Your pulse is low.” 

Martje looked at her mother with fear, but her mother’s bad-mannered tone again was comforting:

“You doctors are fools. Wouldn’t yours be low if you worked a farm and had seven children and cooked and washed and milked all day? You’d want a break, too, Doctor. You’d want to rest.”

“Rest is not going to be possible now, Mrs. Svenson. Time is of the essence here. If the baby does not come in an hour or two, we will have to perform an operation.”

Martje, for the first time in her life, saw fear sweep over her mother’s face.

“That’s not necessary,” she said. 

“It will be soon.”

To Martje’s shock, it looked as if Mrs. Svenson’s face was going to crumple into tears, like a little girl’s, and she turned her head in the pillow. “Lemme alone,” she murmured. “You damn interfering doctors.”

“Listen, I know it’s difficult, but labor is not progressing, Mr. Svenson. You need to rally yourself together. You really need to make an effort here. I don’t know why it’s stopping. There is no medical reason. But your baby will be in distress soon. You must pull yourself together.”

Her brow contracted. 

“Your child will soon be in danger, Mrs. Svenson.”

“Just take it out. Just take it away. Take it away from me.”

Martje, heartbroken, slipped backwards and went out the door. She went and looked at her father, slumped on his chair.

She wanted to say, “I hate you,” but the words were not form on her tongue. Her tongue only melted in pity - for, how pathetic. How small he was. How in shadow.

She then heard a footfall behind her, and Addah slinked in, looking like a black water snake to Marte. “What happened last night?” she asked.

Martje whirled fully around. Addah stood there, her thin arms folded up. “What happened to her?”

Martje felt a flame sweep over her chest. How dare she. “I don’t know what you’re talking about -” 

“Look. Martje. I understand. Believe me, I understand.” She unfolded her arms and bent down a bit. “But I need to help your mother here, and I need to help her desperately. I don’t know if she can survive the blood loss of an operation. I want to help get this baby out, and you can help me. Tell me what happened.”

Martje looked at her squarely in the eye. “I said,” she said coolly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Addah stood up and sighed. “Classic.” She flung a withered hand out. “I don’t mean to be abrasive - I understand - I was raised in a similar family - but I do have to help your mother.”

“I think you have all the information you seem to want,” said Martje, buzzing with anger.

“Then I do,” said Addah, also coldly, and went back into the room.

A minute later, the doctor hurried out, looking over his shoulder, disgruntled and intimidated-looking, as if he had been thrown out. “Fiddle,” he muttered. Then he spied Martje, sitting huddled up against the hall wall.

“You’d better go get pots of water to boil and plenty of soap,” he said. 

“Your mother is going to need it.”

“Do you have anesthesia?”

“Of course.”

“…Will she survive it?”

“With prayers,” he said. He stalked outside.

Martje could hear murmuring voices on the other side of the wood door.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I can’t do it. I’m so tired. Just get him out of me. Take him away.”

“You can rest soon. Just try, angel-girl. This baby wants to meet his ma. Here’s some water. Relax…you’re safe with me.”

“I can’t. I can’t. No, just cut him out. Just cut him out.”

“Yes, honey, yes.” Then a pause. “I’m going to get help. You just wait here.”

Martje backed up, as the door opened, but Addah did not go after the doctor. Instead Martje watched her go into the kitchen.

“Wake up. She needs you,” Martje heard.

“She can do without me. She’s better off without me.”

“That is not true. You should see her face. She’s failing. Your wife could die.”

“That’s not possible. And if it is, what can I do about it?”

“You can do something. Go in there, go after her - talk to her - fight for her. Do you love her?”

“Why are you getting so personal? You have no right -”

“Do you?”

“She’s my world. I can’t live without her.” His voice sounded so weak.

A minute later he came stumbling into the hall. He did not see Martje, crumpled there against the wall. Addah did not come out of the kitchen. He hesitated before the bedroom door and then went in. Martje, after a pause, heard muffled voices.

“I’m sorry - I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry… You’ve got to live. I can’t live without you. Here, you need another pillow… you need a drink of water?”

Sleep, with its ironclad hand, overcame her: she nodded her head and slumped over. She wasn’t sure whether it was a few minutes or many hours later - but she woke suddenly by a wail. It was a fresh wail, the human form of the silent wail of the rosebud pushing open its first petal. It was not a cry of death. Partially in a haze, she stumbled to her feet and opened the door and saw a purple baby being pulled from the bed. He was a frightening color: gray and blue, like her finger once looked like when she cut off the blood supply by tying a string too tight in play. Mrs. Svenson weakly reached for her child, her white hands out, out like doves, and the doctor kept him away; he said, “The cord has been around his neck for too long -”  

And Mrs. Svenson, more like an animal than Martje had ever seen, gripped the sheets with her hands, her hair wild and wet and plastered to her neck, and shrieked, “No - save him, Axel, save him!” Martje realized how silent the baby was. “Don’t let him take him!”

Mr. Svenson seemed to grow to double his height. He swelled his chest out and stood up straight. He got that look that always appalled Martje when directed at her. But he turned it towards the doctor. And he stood up, swaying and stumbling a bit, and clenched his fists and said, “Now, you, Doctor, now you here won’t touch him -”

But the doctor laid the baby flat and put his mouth upon the child’s and Mrs. Svenson without reason kept saying, “Save him, Axel, save him,” and then Martje saw and she saw the need and she knew it had nothing to do with her: she saw for the first time that her parents were in a world all to themselves and neither Martje nor the doctor nor even the new baby were in it, that they existed before anyone else, and there was something between them that was higher and larger than Martje and untouchable. 

The pinkened baby began a cackling cry, and was placed in Mrs. Svenson’s arms and Mr. Svenson shoved his fingers into his eyes, and Martje backed off, blinking as if she had seen too much sunlight, or a ghost.

Chapter Seven

“WHAT? ARE you not even studying anymore?” asked Mr. Svenson.

Olaf was kneeling down, fetching a tin can from under the kitchen sink.

“What do you, just go down river with that Italian all the time? Do you even know who the first president of this country was?”

Olaf stood up with his can for worms and looked sideways. Martje saw instantly that he did not know, and felt a pang for him. She thought her father was aware and was purposefully humiliating him.

Mr. Svenson scoffed. “See! Look. You don’t even make him study,” to his wife.

“How can I? He’s hardly ever around,” said Mrs. Svenson. “He doesn’t even come in for dinner anymore. What can I do to stop him?” 

“Did you even cut the left field like I told you to?” Mr. Svenson asked.

Martje felt another pang. That was something Wilfred would have helped Olaf with.

“Jea, I’ll do more of it tonight,” he said, half-way out the door.

“You probably won’t even be around,” muttered his father. “And what do we do if the rain gets it? Do you think I can work this farm by myself -”

That evening, Martje found Olaf in the left field. The summer sun was dancing like the orange fairies who used to be his friends all over him as he tossed the hay into the wagon.

She quietly fell into step with him, raking.

By and by, she said,

“You’re really smart, did you know that?”

“Shut up, Martje,” he grunted. “What does it matter to you?” He pitched another load.

“I also think you’re really responsible,” she said. “And…living the life you want. You know what you want out of life.”

He was silent and reached down to pull a ladybug off his boot.

She leaned on her rake. “I think…your life is going to be really splendid. I can tell, just by looking at you. It’s obvious to me.” 

He straightened and looked over her head, beyond the stone walls, and towards the sinking sun, blazing through the maples in the woods. She wondered what he was thinking about. 

“It was Franklin, right?” he asked, in a cheerful tone of voice. 

“It doesn’t matter,” said his sister.

Martje put Rosalynde under the Rowan tree, leaning the pot against the trunk so that she could associate with her peers.

“My pet,” she whispered. “How do you feel here?

She knelt down and brushed her finger down her stalk, which had blushed green and was no longer wooded.

“I know this was your original habitat. You must miss it. But we had to take you out, to make you stronger, precious.” She leaned over and touched the buds with her lips and Rosalynde’s few bright heads perked up to return the kiss. 

“It was to make you grow, love.”

“Talking to plants again?” asked a rich voice.

She jumped up. 

“Oh, John!”

He was leaning against a birch and laughing. He was looking rather boyish, with scruffy hair, so Martje knew it was her husband at a younger age - closer to her age.

“I’m come to see if you’ll pick grapes with me today.”

Her grouse-hued skirt swished through the golden grass as they both walked in the meadow, looking for grapes that hung like Christmas garlands from the firs. Martje had known they were there,

“Because I smelled them in the air this morning,” she explained to the boy, “like a deep purple scent. I wager even the Solomon’s temple, with its all walls of cedar, ‘carved in the form of gourds and open flowers’, did not smell half as good as September grapes.”

Eventually she made her way home, her belly and soul full of what is wild and tangy and fresh in an autumn forest.

She tried to scream, but it wouldn’t come out. So she started running, pell-mell, toward the garden.

“Mama!”

She was kneeling, pushing into the soft dirt.

“Mama, there’s a robber in the house!” shrieked Martje. “And Hans and Ingrid and Olaf and Signe are in there!” 

“I’ll come along in a minute,” Mrs. Svenson said placidly.

“No, you need to go now!”

“Martje, calm down…”

“You’re not helping me!” 

She was focusing on pushing the ground like dough. “It’s not so bad…”

So Martje threw herself towards the barn, where her father was pitching hay.

“Papa!” she screamed. “There’s a robber in the house!”

“Now, hjarta…” 

“You’ve got to believe me! - Help them!”

“Don’t be silly… there’s nothing wrong.” 

“My siblings are going to get killed!”

He smiled at her blankly. 

“- They’re going to!”

Just then, something clattered, and Martje woke with a start. She sat up in a cold sweat. 

She stumbled out into the hall, rumple-headed.

Her father appeared, too, and her mother behind him, a candle casting ghastly shadows on her face.

“Do you think it’s an intruder, Axel?”

“What was that noise, Papa?”

“I don’t know, Martje. I’m going to go see. Don’t be frightened,” he added tenderly, before going down the stairs. “When you’re with your Papa, you’re safe.”

But Martje was trembling from head to foot, as the two females tiptoed down after him, and feared for her father’s safety. The flame at least sent out a comforting glow ahead. 

“Give it to me,” he whispered, at the foot of the stairs. “The noise came from the kitchen.”

After one pause, he burst into the room, cast the light around, and illuminated the figure of Olaf, half-way inside through the open kitchen window, with a tin bucket of spilled apples on the floor. 

All in one movement, Mrs. Svenson put the candle down and took his shirt and pulled him inside and down on the floor. Olaf jumped up at once but Mr. Svenson struck him on the side of the head. “Fä! What were you doing?” He struck him on the other side of his head with a cupped hand. “Huh? Sneaking back in because the door was locked? What is going to be next?” Then he started speaking burnt Swedish and Olaf ducked, gurgling, in an unfamiliarly thick voice, “What’s wrong with you? You’re drunk!”

“I’m drunk? I’m drunk? Oh, jea, tell me that I am, while I’ve been working my farm all day and sleeping in my own bed. And where have you been, and what did you do all night long? Fä! Beast! - sneaking out! - you’re going to be the death of your mother and me!”

“Good - then I won’t have any more parents,” he said.

“What did you just say?”

“Go after him, Axel,” said Mrs. Svenson, as her son wrenched himself away and broke past them and jumped clumsily back out the window. 

“No - no - no - don’t follow!” - It was Martje. “It’s fine- he’s fine!”

“Martje, you’re a child - go back to bed where you belong!” Mrs. Svenson whirled on her. “You’ve interfere far too much in this family. I wish you were sometimes just - away. We’ve listened to you when we should be following our own judgment - as adults. A good beating is what he needs and you’ve prevented one too many. If harm comes to his head, we’ll know who’s responsible!”

By the light of the skinned moon, Martje could see the youth’s body jerking and stumbling across the barnyard, and, assured that he was safe at least for the rest of the night, she complied and crept back to her room. 

Safe. What did that even mean to people?

The next day was incongruously glorious: the trees were blooming scarlet and tangerine. And Olaf was not to be found, which was a relief to his sister. 

Martje sat writing in her room. The window was open and her curtains were blowing in the crisp wind. She was squeezing out moats and mares and miters from her paper at a rapid pace with a vengeance. 

But before long, Mr. Svenson entered. He came in without knocking and wavered in her doorway, his spirit feeling ephemeral to her. She immediately called her guards to the front gate.

He leaned his hands backwards against the doorpost.

“What are you writing, hjarta?” he asked.

“About a girl,” vaguely.

“…Can I read it?”

“I don’t usually let people read my stories,” she hedged.

“Ah. I see. And am I in it?” He smiled, as if guilty for asking - “as a monster?” 

There was a blankness in her brain. Then she fumbled: “Of course not.” She laughed.

He seemed to notice her diplomacy. 

“Am I in your story at all?”

“No, not at all!” 

“And your mother?”

“No.”

“And your brothers?”

“No.” Then she said quickly, “See, it’s this a medieval tale -”

“Knights and fair maidens.”

“Jea!” She blushed - “I like that sort of thing.” 

“Is there a fair maiden in it?”

“Sort of.”

“And is she a poor maid…with strawberry-blonde hair, and a dark and overbearing father?”

His lips twitched in some kind of tormented humor, while she tried to find her wits, mutely.

“- That unfortunate girl! Well, keep writing. That’s what people want: for the father to be the monster or the dragon. No one supports the fathers these days - no one stands behind them. But that’s what women want, and then for some strange knight to come riding along. Jea. That’s what fairytales are made of, jea?”

“I suppose,” confusedly. But before a safer answer could form on her lips, his mouth spread like a half moon in a darkened face, and he took his hands off the doorposts and disappeared. 

Now, an oak shudders less on the second blow to its spine. When the ax hit and Olaf’s bed was empty at the end of that September month - and unoccupied the next day and the next day - Mrs. Svenson said nothing. Four days passed.

On the fifth day, Mr. Svenson came into the house and threw his hat on the table. It slid across the surface and bumped into Martje’s cup and she watched her water swirl.

“Mr. Ricci found a message, too, the day that Olaf left. I talked to him at the shop.  He had a similar note, but his son Antonio actually took the time to tell his father where he was going. He said he joined The Montgomery as a cabin boy. That was the boy Olaf spent so much time with, jea?”

“Jea,” said Mrs. Svenson, husking corn.  

“Then we can only guess that’s where he went.”

“Has it sailed?” asked Martje.

“Two days ago.”

“There’s nothing we can do, then?” 

“I’m going to find out the places it’s docking and write ahead to all the ports and have them arrested as runaways. When he comes back, I’ll break every bone in his body.”

“To make him stay? Oh, jea, Father! Because that’s the way to get love!”

And she shied out the back kitchen door before he could do anything, and ran up to the woods.

Once in Sagolandet, she flung herself upon her Rowan tree - and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him while the bark became wet and dark.

Martje slowly walked the scarlet paths back home as her white sparkling gown gradually faded into gray, and found Hans looking rather forlorn in the kitchen.

“What is it, docka?”

“I just don’t know what to play,” he sighed, as if this were a heavy burden on his soul.

“Did you cut those kitchen pictures from that ladies’ journal?”

“Jea. I have the stack under my bed.”

“Then let’s get that box we painted and make a house!”

They spent a pleasant hour pasting pictures of tables and a stove and bowls of soup and bunches of carrots to the back of the wooden box, which Martje had painted for Hans to look like a kitchen.

Mr. Svenson floated in.

“…And now we must find dolls for this,” said Martje, not noticing her father hovering above them with an airy smile.

“What about those corn husk dolls you know how to make?” said Hans.

“What’s this?” Mr. Svenson smiled sweetly. He stumbled to his knees. “No, no - Hans,” he said, taking a picture of an ice cream crank out of his hand. He tried to pick up his son, slipping two hands under his arms, as if he were a baby. “You don’t want to play with girl’s toys.” Hans whimpered. Martje stiffened, but arrested the words on her tongue, as Mr. Svenson’s head lolled and Hans squirmed out easily from under his grasp. Then Hans lay low like a rabbit. He just sat, hunched over, and picked up the ice cream crank again, stupidly.

“No, no, my boy - no, no. See. You don’t want to play with people like Martje -” she felt the venom directed her way, though he didn’t look at her - “or your mama. You love your papa,” he clumsily stroked the boy’s straight yellow hair. Hans stayed frozen, like an animal.

Their father stumbled down to sit. “Now - now,” he said, again vacantly stroking the boy’s head and shoulders. “I’ll save you from them,” he said. “You won’t go through what I did. I promise. I’m sorry, my boy. I’m sorry you’ve had no one else to play with. I left you alone to their claws. Bitches, they are. All of them. But papa’s here, Hans. No one’s going to get you.”

Martje realized she needed to speak. So she cleared her throat. “What do you mean, ‘get’ him?”

“Your mother wants to continue sending him to that town school, though there are only girls in his class this year.”

“She doesn’t have a choice,” said Martje.

“He won’t be with girls anymore, do you hear? Look what happened to Olaf! It’s all part of your mother’s plan to corrupt her sons. But I will have you play with boys, Hans. Boys at school, boys at parties. Don’t fret, Hans. Hans, Hans,” he said desperately, and put his hands - shaking - on his son’s shoulders. “You don’t want to be with all girls, do you?”

“Don’t answer, Hans,” said Martje.

“Be quiet, Martje,” said Mr. Svenson. “- You and your mother!” He turned and started stroking Hans’ hair, who continued staring straight at his picture collection. “All’s well, son. I won’t let anything bad happen to you. Jea? Jea?”

Martje stood by tensely.

His voice was shaky, sweet, and tender, as if talking to a baby. “Look, Hans?” he said, taking out a knife. He swayed slightly. “This is a pocket knife. You don’t want to be playing with dolls, do you?”

Hans looked up nervously at Martje. 

“Don’t worry about me,” her mind strained. “Protect yourself.”

“Nevermind, Papa,” Martje said brightly, as if her father were witless. “I know it’s more fun for Hans to play with brothers. But it was only me around, so -!”

“Actually, I like playing with Martje,” interjected Han stoutly, to Martje’s dismay.

“No, no, sweetheart,” Mr. Svenson crooned, crouching and awkwardly, fumblingly, caressing him like one would a young lover. “You don’t; you don’t.”

“What is going on?” asked Mrs. Svenson, breezing in, wearing a fierce look. She was imposing, despite being fully pregnant and swollen-faced. “Axel! What are you doing? You disgusting man!”

“Me, disgusting? Me, disgusting?” he stood up, lurching forward, some spittle on his lips. His demeanor, Martje noted, was as if a ruffian had come at him with a spear. He was only too happy to defend himself, even against an engorged wife. “I tell you what’s disgusting - the way you and this world are feminizing my boys.”

“Get up, Hans, we’re going,” said their mother. “Your father’s lost his head.”

“Going?”

“No! I have to protect him from you!” He sounded like a child trying to be a hero. He pushed her. “You’ll take him away! You’ll hurt him!”

Hans jumped up and cried, “Mama!”

Papa looked at him, wildly, in pain.

“That wasn’t anything! That wasn’t anything!” he said. He turned on his wife. “You threw yourself back more on purpose - you tried to make it look worse, didn’t you? Always against me, aren’t you? Well, barn, you don’t know what she says to me, what she does to me, when you all aren’t around. You would be shocked. Hideous things.”

Where was Olaf? Where was Wilfred? - the only ones that could possibly take him on. Olaf had slight chance, being scrappy, but Wilfred was as big as his stepfather. Yet they were both gone. If there was a moment the were all going to be murdered by Mr. Svenson’s angst-ridden self, this was it.

But somehow Han’s cry had temporarily broken the madness in his eyes. Like mist clearing on a lake, Martje saw a sane blue come back into his gaze before he turned and went into the kitchen. She didn’t know what he was doing, and didn’t want to know.

The urge to run was in her - to get everyone away. There were six people to protect, but panic made anything seem possible. Her mother was thinking the same thing.

“Quick,” she whispered. “Take Hans. Find Signe and Ingrid. I’ll get the baby. Meet me in the garden behind the barn.” 

Martje felt a rush of joy and relief: she had imagined this for a long time. She found Ingrid and Signe and told them to follow her. She did not know where her father was, but as she slipped outside - trying not to alarm the children, and to shut the door softly - she hoped he would not see them. She went to the garden and was surprised that her mother was not there yet. This made her anxious.

“What are we doing here?” asked Ingrid.

“I don’t know - Mama just told us to meet her by the garden” - by way of excuse. She did not feel like engaging her in the situation. Ingrid would take the crisis onto herself, sift the dramatic matter for its emotional value, and then perform a parody of the fear that Martje really felt. Martje would not lend her this pleasure.

The younger sister snapped a wrinkled pea off its vine. “Is it because of the hullabaloo downstairs?”

“Probably” - noncommittally.

Her mother was so long in coming that Martje’s anxiety wore off. Perhaps the circumstances were not so d

dire…

Then Mrs. Svenson came around the corner. She had on her sunhat and several articles of clothing were hanging off her arm, awry. 

“Go, go, go,” she said. 

Without hesitating, Martje took Signe’s hand and began to drag her down towards the lane, though she did not know to where they were headed.

Aside to her eldest daughter, Mrs. Svenson explained the dreadful thing that had happened inside. Wordlessly, Mrs. Svenson had gone to gather nappies, Gerte hanging off her arm. Her husband had followed her, his neck stuck out like a deranged bird’s. He hovered over her, a dark shadow. She bent her head between her shoulders, but kept searching with one hand for Gerte’s nightshirt in all of the clothing that was hanging off the backs of the chairs. An unclean one fell onto the floor. She bent down to pick it up, lumbering onto her knees, and when she laboriously stood at last, he took his fingers and flicked her on the back of the head. She just cringed and kept going, but Gerte started crying. Then somehow she had escaped and she was not followed. Martje was glad she had not witnessed this all.

“…Where are we going?” she asked, simultaneously with Ingrid.

Mrs. Svenson stalked ahead, carrying Gerte. “I don’t know.” 

“Give me him,” said Martje. “Your condition…”

She took the baby and felt sick. Where did they have to go? They had no relatives in Moguncoy - or in all of America. She could not imagine her mother going to the policeman, either - or to a neighbor’s. They knew very few people, and the shame just seemed too acute, even in the face of their peril, to knock on the door of a neighbor’s, with flowers in the windows, to have it opened by a matron who was just about to serve tea in a polished parlor, and allow her to look up them, a crowd of six foreigners, silent and desperate. Could they expose themselves that much?

They walked as fast as they could down to the lane. Martje hoped against hope that her father would not come out of the house. She tensed up, held her breath, gritted her teeth - but they passed the white farmhouse without molestation. They reached the road, and were soon shaded by mercifully-veiling pines. 

“Keep walking,” pressed Mrs. Svenson.

“Wait, Mama!” said Martje suddenly, an idea bursting into her mind. “Let’s go to the caretaker’s house.”

“It’s locked,” said Mrs. Svenson.

“No, it’s not!” said Martje. “I saw it open earlier today, and a fire in the grate. I think Papa is airing it out for the person who bought it. We can easily…” but she did not finish her sentence. Even as she and her mother were living through this together, there was a distance between themselves and the situation. And neither wanted to uncover the other’s nakedness.

“Well, we could,” said Mrs. Svenson, “but -”

She looked back, and the tundra between them seemed to have been swept away, because Martje read the thoughts typewritten above her head. 

“We don’t have to walk past the house again,” Martje said, “if you’re willing to go through the woods. There is a path.”

“Jea, let’s,” said Mrs. Svenson. “I don’t think we have any other choice.” 

“This way, then,” she said, confident and competent. This was the realm in which she was powerful: escaping. She used to lay in bed at night, fantasizing about violent circumstances - murderers breaking in, her parents going mad - and planning ways out. The fantasy was so thrilling and obsessive that she would never be able to fall asleep until she had constructed an adequate evasion. Once, in a particularly impossible narrative, which had her wits in a vice grip, she stayed up until twelve before she found a solution that really satisfied her and her brain could calmly release into slumber. 

Martje also built routes in the woods for this reason. She was grateful that she had, only earlier that spring, cut a path from the front lane all the way up to Sagolandet, which was behind the very last field, acres away. It had been a gargantuan project, and many of her siblings had helped. They all felt so satisfied once the connection had been made: it snaked along the border of all the fields and she had christened it the Trans-Sylvan. The path had never felt the footprint of an adult, having been smoothed for disappearance and dreams, and she regretted laying bare this jewel before her mother - for Mrs. Svenson had herself in part prompted its construction. But Martje had taken Gerte into her arms, and that made all the difference. So they entered the Trans-Sylvan Road, its entryway hidden by a great red pine, and Ingrid by this time had comprehended the situation.

“Won’t he look in the cottage?” she asked.

“We can lock the door.”

“He has the key!” wailed Ingrid.

“You’re right,” said Martje. “I’ll get it.”

“Martje, no,” said Mrs. Svenson.

“We have to,” she said. “Otherwise it’s pointless to go to the cottage…”

“I don’t want you to go back in there.”

“It’s hanging from the wall, jea, near the matchbox?”

“Jea.”

“Alright, then, I’ll be right back. Hans, you lead.”

“Anyway, he won’t hurt you,” said Mrs. Svenson.

Martje broke through the pines and waxy ferns and ran to the farmhouse. She slipped in the front door. The first floor was empty and quiet. She knew exactly where all the floorboards creaked, and made her way into the kitchen, barely letting the air out of her lungs. There was the key…hanging on the wall, by the matchbox. She took it, and froze.

Upstairs, she heard footsteps.

She bolted out the kitchen door and ran and did not stop until, red in the face, she found her family in the woods.

“I got it,” she said.

The caretaker’s cottage stood, small and gray and weathered, behind the orchard, but it looked like a shore of salvation to Martje.

The group walked up the porch, and then -

“Mama, Mama - stop!” 

Mrs. Svenson rested her hand before the lock.

“I saw someone inside - a shadow crossed the window,” said Martje.

“What do you mean?” in horror. “An intruder?”

“Maybe the person moved in already?”

“I thought you said -”

“I just thought Papa was getting it ready!”

“Min gud, Martje! How could you - Skynda, barn, let’s go.”

But as they were skidding across the porch, their childish boots made too much rattle, and the front door - with an threatening retch - flung itself wide open.

Martje turned in horror. The person inside was shadowed from view - but what a sight the Svensons must have looked! Martje crimsoned: she didn’t want them seen by anyone in this state: frightened, uncombed, unsteady in the glaring sunlight. - Then her mother did something that impressed her.

She slid the key into her apron, cleared her throat, and straightened her back like a flagpole. “Oh! Preserve us! We must have gotten the date wrong. We were coming here to tidy the place for you more. It’s such a sight - and so are we.” She laughed apologetically. “We’ll leave you to your peace now. Forgive our intrusion.” She gave Hans a shove and Signe a yank.

“No, don’t -” The stranger stepped out onto the porch, looking confused and blinking - like anyone would to have a circus of people deposited on one’s step - but rallying to a courtesy that Martje found very old-world: “You needn’t go away, if you’d like - tea.”

Martje registered three things very quickly: that he was very shy, and trying to rise to the occasion; that his accent was neither Swedish nor Bostonian; and that he was unreachably old: perhaps close or even past Wilfred’s age.

“No, we couldn’t impose -” began Mrs. Svenson.

“But you wouldn’t be. I’d like company.”

“- Oh, but you’re settling in now.” 

“It’d be homely to be put the kettle on. Sure, truth’s I’d like to meet my neighbors.”

At that, Mrs. Svenson seemed to remember herself. “Of course, we were going to call…but I’m really sure at the moment you don’t want a pack of us about -” 

“No, truly. I want to see people.”

Mrs. Svenson glanced at her daughter questioningly, and Martje responded with a look of encouragement. They had no where else to go.

“We can call for a spell, Mama,” she said.

The stranger immediately withdrew into the shadows again. “Well, I don’t have much, but there are biscuits for the children,” he said.

“They’re not hungry, but thank you,” said Mrs. Svenson, following him. “They were fed.”

“I’m hungry,” piped up rash Hans.

“You had dinner,” she whispered curtly. 

“Wal, I still am,” he said morosely.

The stranger piled biscuits on a tin plate in the middle of the table recklessly high and then took out mismatching saucers - of pink and gold! and scandalous scarlet and spring green sprayed with sunflowers and poppies! It looked to Martje as if multiple benevolent old ladies had donated him one each. He obviously didn’t have his own dishware set. But when he found he did not own enough teacups to go with the saucers, he looked abashed.

“The younger children don’t take tea,” said Mrs. Svenson. “Three is fine enough.”

“I wanted some,” dared her son again in an injured tone.

“Hans, I swear -” said Mrs. Svenson.

“You can share mine, Hans,” said Martje. “I can’t drink full cups: my nerves can’t handle it,” she added, delicately, to the stranger.

But he seemed further distressed: now he was looking about apologetically. “I wish I had some kind of a cake…” 

“Never you mind,” said Mrs. Svenson. “We will bring you one,” with great dignity. Martje understood that tone. Mrs. Svenson wanted to intimate that she was not a vagabond, and not a charity case.

He actually seemed to blush, and smile. “Oh, thank you.” Then he surprised them all by deftly making and pouring tea. It seemed second-nature to him and he sat down with them all to drink, even keeping his elbows off the table. Martje was impressed. Somehow, though, Mrs. Svenson was at a loss for small-talk: and the stranger did not appear canny at it, either. But the two made a valiant pass at it:

“So - this used to be your land,” the stranger ventured at length.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Svenson. “And it’s all very good” - with pride.

“I think so.”

“You’ll have no trouble with it.”

“I agree.”

“Have you farmed before?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s all I know.” He laughed a little boyishly, self-consciously, insecurely.

“Your accent is so thick and different,” said Mrs. Svenson, trying to be polite. “Where are you from?”

“Ireland,” he said.

“Do you miss it?” Martje was surprised. She knew that was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable question for her mother to ask. Mrs. Svenson often acted as if a black curtain were drawn across the Atlantic and as if any world outside America did not exist. 

But, “No,” he said, bluntly.

The conversation died there, naturally. And perhaps Mrs. Svenson did not know what to ask about that far-away isle: it was as unknown to her as fairy world, and so they all slurped, even Martje too shy of this great big man to say anything herself. But she studied him. She read kindness in his short, ruddy brow under his crop of curly hair - and approved of the twinkle in his eyes.

He was looking down, smiling, at this red hands. Then he stirred himself. “More tea?” he asked, looking into their cups, which were not even a quarter empty.

“Thank you, no, we’d better be going,” said Mrs. Svenson, standing up, in quite a formidable and firm move. “We will visit again.”

“But I haven’t finished yet,” said Hans.

“Jea, you have,” said his mother.

The stranger stood, too. “I must be going myself.” He beat out the fire in the stove and poured the cups into the sink. “I have another load of things to bring over here. In fact, I’m staying over there one more night.” 

“Do you need a cart?”

“No, thank you, ma’am,” he said, slinging a brow carrying bag over his shoulder. “Well, yes, actually. But your husband has already let me borrow your own donkey and cart. I hope that is it alright. This is my last load and I’ll be back with it tomorrow noon.”

“How kind of him,” she murmured. 

“He’s been helping me a lot. ’Twould have been harder on my own.”

Together, they walked back out into the white, hot sunlight. They went down the steps and Signe chased a cabbage butterfly.

“I’ll be putting my key under this flowerpot here,” he said, slipping it there. “I think it would be safer if you knew where it was, you know. Just in case. If you don’t mind, of course.”

“Oh, no,” hurried Mrs. Svenson. “Good for neighbors to keep watch on each other’s houses, I think.”

“I agree.” He shifted his pack onto his back. “Mind yourselves, then.”

“Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help. And come over for your cake soon.”

“I will,” he said, and after a wave of his hand, he jaunted off towards the tree near the road where the donkey was tied.

“Come along, children,” said Mrs. Svenson painfully, and they hurried back into the woods. 

“How did we not exchange names?” asked Ingrid.

“I think we were feeling flustered,” said Martje, “on all sides of us.”

“He’s a nice man,” said Hans, with vigorous good-will, eating an extra biscuit he had been slipped.

“Be quiet, Hans,” said Mrs. Svenson. “Now we don’t have anywhere to go.” But Martje knew her harshness was not meant for her son.

When Martje could see that the stranger had disappeared down the lane, behind the clopping old Barney, she turned and said, “Let’s go back, Mama!”

“We can’t do that. It’s not ours.”

“I know it’s what you’re thinking,” she persisted. “It’s what I am, too. There’s nothing else we can do.”

Mrs. Svenson paused, hesitated, wavered.

“We need to!” pressed Martje with little self-control. “We have to. And he won’t be home until noon tomorrow.”

Mrs. Svenson broke down easily: the prospect of the home through the forest was not appealing.

That night, Signe wept and panicked and thrashed about, saying, “I want to go home, I want to go home,” and Mrs. Svenson rocked her fretfully in the kitchen: “Tyst, tyst, tyst.”

Upstairs in the loft bed, Martje whispered, “Do you think he knew?” 

“That’s ridiculous,” said Ingrid. “How could he have known?”

But Martje stared at the rafters, blurred in the darkness.

“Think he sleeps in this bed?” murmured Ingrid in time.

Martje felt startled by the question. “I don’t know,” she said. She felt unexplainably embarrassed. “Probably. Why does it matter?” Her tone was a trifle cold and reserved.

Ingrid turned over. “I don’t know. It’s just strange to think of.”

In a few minutes she fell asleep, as peacefully as an angel. Martje was achingly resentful: she lay there, her chest tight, listening to her sister’s even breathing, and at last relinquished into a fitful slumber, only after each scratch of a star had come out and the globe of the moon has risen woefully in the sky.

Painting by Istvan Csok