West of the Moon

by Margi Preus

  Inside the cloth walls it’s even darker and warmer, and it doesn’t smell too sweet, either. The mother-to-be is writhing on the bed, her pale face glistening with sweat, her hair as wet as if a bucket of water had been poured over it. Her eyes flick from face to face, begging for help. They lock on mine just as Mor grabs my arm and pulls me in.

  “I can’t help you,” I say.

  The old crone holds up her knotted, swollen hands. Then she takes mine and holds them in front of my face.

  “Look at those fine hands, my girl. Small and smooth and deft. Those hands our good Lord gave you. Shouldn’t you be making use of them?”

  “I have made use of them,” I mumble.

  “Good use, then,” the old woman says, catching my eyes with hers.

  She knows all, I see.

  “There are things that need doing that I cannot do, but for which you are well-suited—” She goes on talking, but I stop listening, for who should be sitting at the foot of the bunk but the old gentleman in the hat: Death.

  He shoots me a dark look, and I bolt for the curtain. But Mor Kloster is fast for an old lady, and she grabs me before I can get out.

  She explains what she wants me to do as she plunges my hands into a bowl of warm water and hands me a slip of soap. The baby is going to come out feet first, she tells me, handing me a towel to dry my hands, and is going to need some help. “Quickly,” she adds.

  Well. I’ve done other hard things, haven’t I? And wasn’t I just wishing for something difficult to have to press my weight against?

  So I find myself kneeling on the bed, trying to get in some better position, if there is such a thing, for this task. I give Death a wary glance, and he raises an eyebrow at me.

  “Water …” the woman on the bed whispers, and I remember Mama whispering in the same harsh-throated way. I was only five when Mama gave birth to Greta. Papa was out in the forest, and it was just Mama and me at home.

  I brought her a cup of water, then stood with my fingers in my mouth watching for a while. She was suffering, I could see that. Her eyes squeezed shut against the pain, her hair matted, her skin clammy. Mama didn’t seem like my smooth-faced mother anymore, the mother who took care of me, sang lullabies, and kissed my bruises.

  “Astri,” Mama said, “I need you to go get help. Go get Mor Kloster. You know how to get there. We’ve been there together. Go down the path, through the pasture, keep straight on it, over the little bridge, stay on the path through the forest, and …” She waved her hand for me to go.

  I ran out of the house and down the path. I knew the old crone who had come to our house in her dark skirts and hushed voice. She was a scary old woman. Maybe a witch! She smelled of camphor, and her eyes were black as a mink’s.

  My steps slowed.

  But then I thought of Mama with her damp skin, her tangled hair, her stifled cries. She thought the troll kone could help her, and so maybe I should fetch her as Mama had asked.

  The legs and baby’s bottom have emerged, and Mor Kloster tells me that the babe’s arms need to be released from their crossed position before the baby can be fully born. I am supposed to reach inside and do this.

  I feel my hands being guided, as Mor whispers in my ear. “Very fine,” she says.

  The mother groans.

  “Don’t let her move,” Mor Kloster says, and the other women place their hands firmly on the woman’s shoulders and legs.

  I scampered down the path, through the forest, and out into the open heath. It seemed to me that after the old woman had been to our house the first time, everything had changed. Mama stopped singing. She cried sometimes when she thought no one was listening. She stared out windows. And she had stopped loving me.

  I plopped down in the heather to think. After a moment I lay down and looked up at the clouds moving across the sky in a regal parade. There was the King of the Clouds, and there the Queen. Next came the princesses, a dozen of them, in their fluffy pink dresses. For a while I lay like this, watching the clouds float by. But then I began to feel that perhaps the ground was moving and the clouds were standing still. The more I thought about it, the more that seemed to be how it was, and pretty soon I felt the earth speeding along so fast I had to hang on for dear life. I stretched out my arms and clung to the grass and stones under my fingers.

  It made me dizzy, thinking how fast the earth was hurtling along, and where were we going? I wondered, closing my eyes.

  After a while of the world spinning like this, I heard a clucking sound, and I opened my eyes. There, standing over me, blocking the clouds from view, was the old troll hag herself!

  “Here’s a tender little mushroom, ready for picking!” the old crone said.

  I scrambled up. “I’m not a mushroom!” I said. “I’m a girl.”

  “A little girl, are you?” said the woman. “What are you doing out here all by yourself, then? Where’s your mama?”

  Mama! I was filled with shame when I remembered my mother at home, suffering. Somehow I had lain down in the grass and watched the clouds go by instead of fetching the old lady as I had been told. “Mama wants you to come,” I said. “Hurry!”

  “There’s trouble?”

  I nodded.

  “Why didn’t you come for me right away? Why was it I found you here, lying in the meadow, gazing at the sky?”

  “I was afraid …”

  The old woman took my hand in her own and set off down the path.

  “It can be a fearful thing to meet your destiny.”

  Did she say that then, or is she saying that now? I wonder, as with my fingers I move the tiny arms across the babe’s chest.

  “Well done,” Mor Kloster whispers in my ear. “Now, gently… gently…”

  In the next push the child is delivered, slippery and red-faced and very much alive. And for a moment, I am back in the cotter’s hut with Mama, and Greta is delivered in the same way, all shiny and goopy and screaming her head off. I remember this, and that there was so much joy there was no end to it. Except it did end, quickly and harshly, for Mama died then, not long after. And that was when a cloud passed over the sun, casting a dark shadow that never moved away.

  “Hand the child to me,” says Mor.

  I realize I am holding the infant; the pulse and thrum of its life courses through my hands and into my whole self. Or perhaps that’s me, trembling.

  “Now you have fulfilled your part of the bargain,” Mor Kloster says to me.

  “Bargain?”

  “You have delivered to me your first born. No doubt you will help birth many more in your years.” The old woman says this as she is inspecting the babe. Then she glances up, and our eyes meet. She gives me a little nod, and the other ladies in the makeshift room laugh.

  “’Tis her first born, that’s so!” one says, and they are all a-chatter about it and wasn’t that a clever thing, and hadn’t they been wondering how it was going to turn out after all?

  Mor instructs me how to swaddle the infant, placing the child’s arms across his chest and wrapping the band around the babe. I’m to wind it in a special way and tie the band so it forms a cross. But I’m trembling so much I can’t do it.

  “Steady … steady,” Mor says, her words themselves steadying me. And the trembling starts to feel like … well, like thrumming. Like the whirring of Spinning Girl’s wheel. It seems to shake loose the knots and knobby bits and stones and steel inside me. All those hard bits soften and dissolve a little, like lead in a beaker, slowly melting over a warm fire. It’s scary and daunting, but exciting, too. Is this how it feels to meet your destiny? I wonder.

  “Let us say together the Lord’s Prayer,” says one of the women.

  I bow my head and part my lips, and then I remember! Death is there, just waiting for me to utter the words of the prayer. If I say it, he’ll have me. So, as the first words are spoken, I pass the babe to his mother, duck outside the curtained walls, and gulp down some air. My heart buzzes with the words, but not a sound escapes my lip
s.

  When the women bustle off to make “bed food” for the new mother, I step back into the chamber. I glance at the place where Death sat, but he has gone. On to the next soul, I suppose. Or perhaps he was never there at all.

  Mor hands me the Black Book. “Here is your book,” she says.

  I back away.

  “It’s just a book,” she says. “You might find some useful thing in it, now and again. There are cures there, but there’s plenty of rubbish, too.”

  “How do you know which is which?” I ask her.

  “That comes from practice. And from using this”—she points to her head—“which you must do all your life and with every single thing you hear and read. What are the true things, and what are not? What is good, and what is rubbish? Everything you encounter in life, everything you read, you have to use your own noggin, my girl.”

  “Well,” I tell her, “it doesn’t matter, since I don’t know how to read.”

  “You’ll learn,” she says. “And since you’re going to America, you’ll also need to learn to read English.” She says this matter-of-factly, as if she is telling me I’ll need to gather eggs from the nest if we’re to have breakfast.

  “I can’t learn all that!” I protest. “It’s too hard. I haven’t the wits for it.”

  She puts one hand on her hip and gives me a good looking-at. “Child,” she says, with a shake of her head, “if there’s one thing you don’t lack, it’s wits. You’ll learn to read, and you’ll start right now, because there’s a lot of catching up to do.” She escorts me out of the bedchamber and then shoves me toward Bjørn, who is standing there with a book under his arm.

  “If you like, Margit, I will help you …” He trails off when he sees my scowl, then takes a step back. “I remember how we met!” he says suddenly. “You’re the girl—that’s the same scowl—” And he starts laughing, which, of course, makes me scowl even harder.

  Then I hear Greta’s voice saying, “Why don’t you show the goodness in you? You’re as full of it as a hive is of honey.” Do I have goodness inside me? For the first time in ever so long, I think that I might.

  East of the Sun, West of the Moon

  n the story of the girl and her prince, after the girl had gained entry into the castle, and the prince had finally overcome the sleeping potion that had been given him, and after the troll hag had tried and failed to wash the tallow out of his shirt and had flown into such a rage that she burst, the prince and the girl (now his bride) took as much gold and silver as they could carry and moved far away from the castle that lay east of the sun and west of the moon. And that was the end of their story.

  My story has not come to an end at all, but a sort of beginning. This is my story now, to make of it what I will.

  Here I sit with Bjørn, learning to read, and that’s a beginning of sorts. He has a book we’re studying from, and I’ve brought along Papa’s book. Someday, when I learn enough, I want to read it myself. Meanwhile, it sits on my lap, unopened.

  It’s hard to concentrate on the page when everyone says that we might get our first glimpse of America any moment—if the fog would lift, that is. Anyway, this reading business is going slowly. Just like the parson’s wife, Bjørn says he thinks I need spectacles, because of how close I hold the book to my eyes.

  But we are working at it when here comes the captain, shouting, “Get the speaking-trumpet! Light the turpentine torch!”

  Bjørn and I lift our heads to see that the fog has become so thick that you can’t see from here to the other end of the Columbus. We’ve also become aware, as have the other passengers, all tense and silent, of a deep rumbling sound.

  “What is it?” someone asks.

  “A steamer,” the captain answers darkly. “Where’s that fiddler?” he shouts. “Roust him out!”

  The mate shouts into the speaking-trumpet, the torch is lit, and soon the fiddle starts to sing, slicing the fog like a sheep shears through wool.

  There’s the ringing of a bell, a signal from the steamer. But the rumble comes nearer. Still, we see nothing—the fog takes care of that.

  The fiddle’s music calls plaintively out over the water. “We are here,” it seems to sing, over and over. “Here we are.”

  Now the rumble is beside us.

  There’s a collective gasp that turns to a sigh as the fog seems to take the form of a ship, then passes by. It takes but a heartbeat for the ship to pass us, and everyone breathes again.

  After a time the sun breaks through the fog bank, as if the music cut a hole for it. Bjørn and I set aside the book to watch how the sun dots the ocean with bright patches of light, making brilliant stepping stones leading all the way to America, maybe.

  Excited shouting makes us follow the crowd’s pointing fingers off toward the horizon.

  “Do you see it?” Bjørn says. He turns to me. “Can you see? It’s land!” He jumps up to join the others at the rail. “America!” he cries.

  It’s too far away for me to see—perhaps the parson’s wife is right about spectacles—but I don’t need to see it. I can picture it, like the castle that lies east of the sun and west of the moon, all aglitter with possibility.

  I listen to the Columbus plowing its way through the water, and let the wind pour over me and past me. The ship moves steadily west, and I feel myself moving steadily forward, toward something, although I don’t know what it will be.

  I don’t suppose it will all be golden stepping stones. There is, after all, Death to dodge. I can’t imagine it will be easy to avoid speaking the Lord’s Prayer while living in a parson’s home, but I’ve done other hard things in my life. And then there’s the Black Book I’m bringing—into a parsonage! Well, I can’t say how that will be.

  I have many more questions than answers, which Mor has said is the way of life. Will I find Papa? Or will Death catch up to me first? Will I ever see Spinning Girl, my own dear sister, again? This key around my neck—what is it for? What will Papa’s book say? And will I, can I, ever be a good person?

  I am wondering all this when who should come and stand over me but Grace.

  “You’re not over there”—she gestures behind her at the crowd gathered at the rail—“looking at America.”

  “I can’t see it.” I point to my eyes. “I’ve been told my eyes are bad.”

  “I don’t want to see it,” she says. “I never wanted to go there.” She pulls the hairbrush from her pocket and shakes it at me. “By the way, I’ve never gotten a single coin from this worthless thing.”

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her. And I mean it.

  She sits down next to me. “You know,” she says, laughing, “this silly hairbrush is the only thing that kept me from tearing my hair out by the fistful. I was so angry with Papa for taking us away from home. I didn’t want to go. Oh, I really did not. I was angry with him. Angry at everyone! The only thing that kept me from throwing myself into the sea was trying to get gold to fall from my hair!”

  This makes me laugh. “It’s very pretty,” I tell her, and then surprise myself by saying, “Let me braid it for you.”

  So we sit in the fading light, and I take her hair in my hand and begin to braid, in the way I remember Spinning Girl braiding mine.

  “You must be happy to be almost to America,” she says to me.

  “Yes, I suppose I should be,” I answer.

  After I have made one long braid, I wind it around on top of Grace’s head like a crown, pinning it with her hairpins. “Why didn’t you want to go to America?” I ask her.

  “Why, because of my friends! I had to leave them all behind!”

  “Maybe you can make new ones,” I tell her, “though I am hardly qualified to give advice on the matter.”

  “Perhaps you and I could be friends,” she says.

  I can only nod, for suddenly my eyes are full of tears. A symptom of my bad eyes, must be. I wipe them dry and look out at the sea.

  At that moment, sea and sky go dark and seem to disappear altogether
. Then, as if by magic, they are rekindled, this time with a pale gleam—not like daylight, yet not dark night either. It’s the moon, rising up full behind us, casting a blue glow over all the world as we sail toward the last of the sun.

  Though I don’t know everything about my past, nor do I know what the future will bring, right now I know I’m just where I belong: sailing on a perfect ocean of light, east of the sun and west of the moon.

  Author’s Note

  I went back downstairs again, bringing with me a pretty farmer girl, Margit, whom Herman and I had thought about taking as our maid … I said that I knew she was alone and that she did not have anyone to support her, and if I could do her a favor by engaging her, then I would do it.

  —from Linka’s Diary

  The idea for this story came from those few lines in my great-great-grandmother’s diary. Linka Preus was a young wife when she and her husband, Herman, a Lutheran pastor, sailed from Norway to America on the Columbus in 1851. But who was this pretty farmer girl? And why was she traveling alone with no prospects in America? These were questions that intrigued me but for which I could find no historical answers. So I invented her story.

  Although Astri’s story is fictional, the circumstances of the story are based on historical reality.

  “America fever” was spreading in Norway, largely because of the lack of opportunities for an increasing population. Supporting large families on farms with poor, rocky soil and a short growing season was challenging. Sometimes girls, by age fifteen considered adults, went or were sent away to other farms to work as dairymaids.

  Vaccines for smallpox and other deadly scourges had been introduced (which contributed to the increase in population), but many illnesses remained poorly understood or not understood at all. Among them are some that play roles in this story.

  RICKETS

  In nineteenth-century Norway, the childhood illness of rickets was common but misunderstood. Babies born healthy would gradually sicken, developing enlarged heads, black teeth, and jelly-soft bones. Unable to crawl or walk or sometimes even roll over, they wailed in misery. If left untreated, the bowed legs, curved backs, and skeletal deformities endured by rickets sufferers could persist into adulthood.