The first few days were a haze. I remember wet cloth on my face and an aching all over, a searing pain in my back and belly. Something was wrong in me. I could taste it as a bitter cloying on my tongue; I was festering from within. The blood on the rags Mother brought me turned from red and black to pink and yellow, and it reeked.
I often lay awake, too weak to talk but not to listen, staring at the ceiling. I knew the patterns and swirls of the timber by heart, just as I knew every inch of that room. The awkward angle of the small cooking stove, haphazardly installed. The open shelves on the wall above the table with cups, plates, and tins filled with printed psalms and letters. A large chest under a window for storage. The narrow stairs to the loft where we slept as children. The rickety spinning wheel placed in a corner. The four mismatched chairs with flaking paint. There were three clotheslines strung across the ceiling, heavy with musty garments. Two beds. One bench. Oh, how I loathed that place, and even more so when I found myself trapped there, too sick to move an inch.
Listening in on my family did nothing to soothe my pain.
“She won’t last,” Father said from his place by the stove.
“Don’t you have any work to do?” Mother was sitting by the table, preparing moss for drying. It would help soak up the blood. “She will or she won’t. It’s up to God now.”
“Will he hang if she dies?” Olina was stirring the pot of gruel. She would want me to taste it later. The thought of it made my stomach churn.
“No one will hang.” Father sucked his pipe.
“Maybe we should tell someone,” Mother muttered.
“Tell them what?” The pipe came away. “That she has made a fool of herself and gotten herself in trouble? We reap what we sow in this world.”
“What did you sow then, to have such a grand life?” The bitterness coiled like smoke in the room.
“You knew what I had when you took me. If it’s not good enough you’re free to go elsewhere.” He spat on the floor. “You and the changeling both.”
Mother laughed then, loud and shrill. “Oh Paul, you can’t talk your way out of that one.” She would be nodding in my direction. “She is yours; just look at that nose.”
“The changelings can look like anything they want; what do I know if you’ve been seeing some troll?”
“When would I have had time for that with your brood hanging in my skirts?”
It was Father’s turn to laugh, a hard-edged chuckle. “Too late for regrets now, isn’t it?”
“You should talk to someone, though.” Mother’s voice again. “If she dies, someone will have to answer.”
He took a while, seemed to consider it. “We’re losing income, that’s for sure.”
Mother sighed. “You should let her keep what she earns or she’ll never get far.”
“We feed her, don’t we? Clothe her?”
“Barely. She saved up for that lace with what little you left her. Now I don’t see how I can get the blood out.”
“They say she was beaten by Selbu Lake.” Olina had been out then, down in the valley. “They say it was he who did it—he who put that child in her.”
Mother gave another sigh. “I’m just glad he didn’t drown her, then.”
“He was about to”—Olina’s voice rose with glee—“but then someone came and he lost his nerve.”
Do you want to sleep in the lake tonight, Brynhild? That was what he had said to me down by the lapping water. I’ll help you get in there, don’t you worry. You and your bastard both!
“They have never been very good to us, the people down in the valley.” Mother’s voice was hard as rock. “They always looked down on us, even those with little to their name.” This was an old and worn complaint. I knew what she would say next: “We ought to keep ourselves to ourselves.”
“If Father weren’t so mad all the time—” Olina stopped midsentence; there was a scratching sound and a loud smack. He had gotten off his chair and stopped her foul mouth.
I heard him sit back down again, the creaking of his chair. “Perhaps it’s better if this is the end.”
Mother sucked in her breath. “Shame on you for saying such a thing. She is your own flesh and blood, and a blessing.”
“Doesn’t look much like a blessing to me, lying there bleeding in the hay.”
“Have you no heart?”
I heard Father filling his cup from the bottle; strong fumes mingled with the smoke and sickness in the air. “The Lord gives and the Lord takes.”
“And we ought to be grateful for every small gift he gives.”
I opened my mouth then. Lips dry and split, and spoke my very first words since that night: “Or I could leave.”
The room fell quiet; only the flames crackled and sputtered. Then there was a flurry of motion as my mother and sister crossed the floor and came into my vision, Olina with an angry red mark on her cheek.
Mother’s dry hand landed on my forehead. “I think the fever has broken.” She sounded surprised. I was not. I had sworn to live, if only to spite—and that was what I would do.
* * *
—
My brothers Peder and Ole came by, delivering letters. They had already heard about me; I could see it on their faces when they entered. None of my siblings but poor Olina with her limp lived at St?rsetgjerdet anymore. All had thought Peder would take over when Father grew old, and perhaps he would, but not yet. He was a tenant on another farm where he got more land to work for himself. Ole, far younger, stayed with him. Father complained about that; he would rather have Ole at home. My brother was happy to escape, though. Peder was not an easy man either, but he had a wife and young children. It was livelier there.
Peder nodded in my direction when he saw me. I was no longer in bed but sitting on the spinning chair with a cushion of moss between my legs. It did not smell as bad as it had. The blood had cleared up some, trickling pink.
“So you’re up then.” He delivered a small wad of letters to my mother. She took a quick look at them and noted the handwriting. Then she gave them to me.
“She is just sitting there,” Olina complained, looking my way. “She can’t do anything.”
“She’ll be back to work in no time, I’m sure.” Peder’s gaze avoided mine and he turned to serve himself coffee from the kettle. Ole was still lingering by the door, tall and broad-necked, a little simple. He did not look at me at all but stared down at the floor instead.
“Are they talking in the valley?” Mother asked Peder. Father was out, so we could chat freely.
“Some.” Peder sat down and tasted his coffee, grimaced at the heat. His beard was dark and full, as Father’s used to be, his face tanned and worn from long hours in the sun. “When will you go back to work, Little Brynhild? I’m afraid they’ll find another maid if you—”
“She won’t.” Mother cut him off. “Not if I have any say in it.”