Astrid Lindgren, illustrated by Ilon Wikland, translated from the Swedish by Jill Morgan

by Astrid Lindgren

  “If I ever see Nonno again, I’ll thank him for making these flutes for us,” said Pompoo.

  “I will too,” I said.

  But then I thought that we’d probably never see Nonno again.

  “Pompoo, which way should we go now?” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter which way we go, as long as we go together,” said Pompoo.

  That’s exactly what I thought too. We walked and walked, and we didn’t feel so small and lost anymore. Because we were together and we played on our flutes. The old melody sounded clear and pretty in the Blackest Mountain, and it was as if it wanted to comfort us and help us to be brave.

  The passage sloped downward, further and further down. The faint light we had seen throughout the mountain became a little brighter. It seemed to come from a fire. Yes, the firelight shone over the dark rock walls of the mountain, it flickered and grew.

  We came closer and closer to the fire as we walked and played our flutes. We played the old melody when we stepped into the Swordsmith’s Cave.

  It was a smithy we had come to, and a huge fire burned there. There was a big anvil and by the anvil stood a man. He was probably the biggest and strongest man I’ve ever seen. He had a lot of red hair and a big red beard. He was sooty and black and had the biggest and blackest hands that I’ve seen. He had thick, bushy eyebrows, and when we stepped into his cave, he stood still and looked at us with his eyebrows turned up in great surprise.

  “Who plays in my mountain?” he said. “Who is it that plays in my mountain?”

  “A knight accompanied by his squire,” said Pompoo. “A knight from Farawayland. Prince Mio is the one who plays in your mountain.”

  The Swordsmith came toward me. He touched my forehead with his sooty finger and looked astonished.

  “How fair is your brow,” he said. “How clear is your eye! And how beautifully you play in my mountain!”

  “I’ve come to ask you for a sword,” I said. “Eno has sent me.”

  “What will you do with a sword?” said the Swordsmith.

  “I will fight Sir Kato,” I said.

  As soon as I said that, the Swordsmith roared more terribly than I’ve ever heard before.

  “Sir Kato!” he shrieked, so that it boomed inside the mountain. “Sir Kato, death to him!”

  A thunderous rumble echoed far away in the dark passages. When the Swordsmith shouted it didn’t become a whisper. No, it boomed and echoed louder than thunder between the rock walls.

  The Swordsmith stood there with his big black hands clenched, and the light from the fire fell over his face, which was dark with rage.

  “Sir Kato, death to him!” he shrieked over and over again.

  The light from the fire also fell on a long row of sharp swords, hanging on the walls of his cave. They glittered and glimmered and looked so ghastly. I went to look at them. The Swordsmith stopped yelling and came over to me.

  “Look at my swords,” he said. “All of my sharp swords. I have forged them for Sir Kato. Sir Kato’s swordsmith, that’s who I am.”

  “If you’re his swordsmith why did you shout ‘Death to Sir Kato?’ ” I asked.

  He clenched his hands so tightly that his knuckles became white. “Because no one hates Sir Kato as deeply as his own swordsmith,” he said.

  Then I noticed he dragged a long chain of iron that bound him to the mountain wall. It rattled as he walked across the floor.

  “Why are you chained to the mountain?” I asked. “And why haven’t you heated the chain over your fire and broken it on your anvil?”

  “Sir Kato chained me here firmly, himself,” said the Swordsmith. “No fire can break his chains and no hammer. Sir Kato’s chains of hate don’t break so easily.”

  “Why do you have to wear chains of hate?” I asked.

  “Because I forge his swords,” he said. “I forge the swords that kill the good and innocent. That’s the reason Sir Kato has chained me firmly, with the most secure chains there are. He can’t manage without my swords.”

  The Swordsmith looked at me with eyes that burned like fire. “I sit here in my cave hammering swords for Sir Kato. Night and day I hammer swords for him, he knows that. But there is one he doesn’t know about, and this is it here.”

  The Swordsmith dragged his chains over to the cave’s darkest corner and from a crevice he brought out a sword. It was shining like a flame of fire in his hand.

  “For thousands and thousands of years I’ve hammered this sword, which can cut through stone,” he said. “And now, tonight I’ve finally succeeded, not until this very night.”

  He lifted the sword and with a single slash cut a big gash in the mountain wall.

  “Oh, my sword, my Flame of Fire,” he muttered. “My sword which can cut through stone!”

  “Why must you have a sword that can cut through stone?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you,” said the Swordsmith. “This sword was not forged for the good and innocent. This sword lies waiting for Sir Kato himself. He has a heart of stone. You didn’t know?”

  “No, I know very little about Sir Kato,” I said. “I only know that I’ve come to fight him.”

  “He has a heart of stone,” said the Swordsmith, “and a claw of iron.”

  “He has a claw of iron?” I said.

  “You didn’t know?” said the Swordsmith. “His right hand is gone and in its place he has a claw of iron.”

  “What does he do with his claw of iron?” I asked.

  “He tears the heart out of people’s chests,” said the Swordsmith. “Only one touch from the iron claw—instantly the heart is gone. Then he gives them a heart of stone in its place. Everyone around him must have a heart of stone, so he decided.”

  I shivered when I heard that. And more and more I began to wish it were finally time to fight Sir Kato.

  The Swordsmith stood beside me. He stroked the sword with his sooty hands. It was certainly his most precious possession.

  “Give me your sword that cuts through stone,” I requested. “Give me your sword so that I can fight Sir Kato.”

  The Swordsmith stood silent for a long time and looked at me. “Yes, you may have my sword,” he said at last. “You may have my Flame of Fire. Only because your brow is so fair and your eye so clear and because you played so beautifully in my mountain.”

  He placed the flaming sword in my hand and fire seemed to flow from it right through my whole body, making me so strong.

  Then the Swordsmith walked toward the wall of the cave and opened a large hole. I felt a cold, icy wind flow in and heard the sound of crashing waves.

  “Sir Kato knows much,” said the Swordsmith. “But he doesn’t know that I’ve bored through the mountain and opened my prison. I drilled for many years so that I could have a window in my prison.”

  I walked over to the hole and looked out across the Dead Lake toward Sir Kato’s castle. It was night again, and the castle lay as dark and sinister as it had when I last saw it. And just as before, one window glared like an evil eye out over the water of the Dead Lake.

  Pompoo came over beside me, and we stood there quietly and thought of the approaching fight.

  The Swordsmith was behind us and I heard his voice. “It’s coming, it’s coming,” he murmured. “Sir Kato’s final battle approaches.”

  A Claw of Iron

  THE SKY ABOVE the lake was dark, and the air was filled with the Bewitched Birds’ cries. Out there were the dark frothy waves, the frothy waves that would cast our boat across the Dead Lake and maybe strike it against the rocks below Sir Kato’s castle.

  The Swordsmith stood by the opening and watched while I untied a little boat. It lay moored in a cove inside the mountain itself, a cove hidden between high walls of rock.

  “Sir Kato knows much,” said the Swordsmith, “but he doesn’t know that the Dead Lake dug into my mountain. He knows nothing about my secret cove and nothing about the boat that lies by the secret landing under my window.”

  “Why do you
have a boat that you can never row?” I asked.

  “I can row,” said the Swordsmith. “I climb out through this opening and stretch my chain as far as it goes. Then I can row. I can row three boat-lengths in my secret cove.”

  He stood by the opening, big and black he loomed above the landing. It was so dark that I could hardly see him, but I could hear him laughing. It was a strange, frightening laugh. It was as if he didn’t really know how to laugh.

  “Sir Kato knows much,” he said. “But there is something else he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what is loaded in my boat that will cross the Dead Lake tonight.”

  “And there is something you don’t know,” I said. “You don’t know if you will ever see your boat again. Maybe it will lie at the bottom of the lake tonight. Like a cradle rocked by the waves, at the bottom of the Dead Lake perhaps, and in the cradle sleep Pompoo and I. What will you say then?”

  The Swordsmith sighed deeply.

  “Then I’ll just say, ‘Sleep soundly, Prince Mio! Sleep soundly in your cradle, rocked by the waves!’ ”

  I began to row and lost sight of the Swordsmith. He disappeared in the darkness. But he called to us. Just as we steered through the narrow channel between the Swordsmith’s secret cove and the Dead Lake, I heard him calling softly to us, “Be on your guard, Prince Mio,” he called. “Be on your guard as soon as you see the claw of iron. If you don’t have your sword ready then, it will be the end of Prince Mio.”

  “The end of Prince Mio . . . the end of Prince Mio,” whispered the rock walls around us, and it sounded so eerie. But I didn’t have time to think about it anymore, because at that moment the Dead Lake hurled wild waves across our boat and carried it far away from the Swordsmith’s mountain.

  We traveled over the surging depths. We were already far from land, and we felt so small and scared, Pompoo and I.

  “If only our boat weren’t so little,” said Pompoo. “If only the lake weren’t so deep and the waves so wild, and if we weren’t so small and alone!”

  Oh, how wild they were, all the waves in the Dead Lake! I’ve never seen wilder waves. They threw themselves over us, tore at us, pulled at us, and hurled us on toward more raging waves. It was pointless trying to row. We held on to the oars, both Pompoo and I. We held on as hard as we could. But a surging wave came and tore one of them from us, and another raging wave broke the second oar. Many violent spitting, surging waves rose sky-high around us and around our boat, which was frail and small, exactly as we were.

  “Now we don’t have any oars,” said Pompoo. “And soon we won’t have a boat. When the waves hurl it against Sir Kato’s rocks it’ll break. Then we’ll never need a boat again.”

  The Bewitched Birds came flying from all directions. They circled around us and cried and wailed. They flew so close. I could see their blank, melancholy little eyes in the darkness.

  “Are you Nonno’s brother?” I asked one of them. “Are you Totty’s little sister?” I asked another.

  But they only looked at me with their blank, melancholy little eyes, and their cries were cries of despair.

  Though we didn’t have oars and our boat was crippled, we were carried straight toward Sir Kato’s castle. That was where the waves wanted to take us, it was there they thought of crushing us against the rocks. We would die at Sir Kato’s feet, as the waves wanted.

  We came closer and closer to the dangerous rocks, closer and closer to the black castle with the evil staring eye, faster and faster the boat went, wilder and wilder were the waves.

  “Now,” said Pompoo, “now . . . Oh, Mio, it’s the end!”

  But then something strange happened. Just as we thought we would die, the waves calmed down and became still. They became completely still. They carried our boat gently past all the dangerous reefs and pushed it gently toward the black rugged rocks below Sir Kato’s castle.

  Why had the waves surged so wildly at first and then grown still? I didn’t understand it. Maybe it was because they hated Sir Kato and gladly wanted to help the one who had come to fight him. Maybe the Dead Lake had once been a happy and blue little lake lying between safe shores, a little lake that reflected the sunshine on beautiful summer days and where gentle little waves splashed against the rocks. Maybe there was a time when children swam and played on the shores and the sound of children’s laughter rang out across the water, not sounding like it did now with the Bewitched Birds’ sad cries. That was probably why the waves had rushed high around us, and why they had made a frothy barrier between us and the evil staring eye in the castle up above.

  “Thank you, kind lake!” I said. “Thank you, wild waves!”

  But there were no waves. The water lay still and quiet and black, not answering.

  High over our heads, high above on the steep cliff stood Sir Kato’s castle. We were on his shore now. We were close to him as never before, and this night was the night of our battle. I wondered if they knew, all those who had waited for thousands and thousands of years. I wondered if they knew that this was the night of the battle, and if they thought about me. Was my father the King thinking of me? I hoped that he was. I knew that he was. I knew that he was sitting alone somewhere far away and thinking of me and was sad and whispering to himself, “Mio, my son!”

  I grasped my sword and it felt like fire in my hand. It was a terrible battle that I had to fight, and I didn’t want to wait any longer. I longed to meet Sir Kato, even if it meant I would die. The promised battle must be now, even if there wouldn’t be a Mio anymore when it was over.

  “Mio, I’m so hungry,” said Pompoo.

  I took out what was left of the Bread That Satisfies Hunger and we ate it by the rocks below Sir Kato’s castle. Our hunger was satisfied, we felt stronger and almost happy after we had eaten it. But it was the last of our bread and we didn’t know when we would have more to eat.

  “Now we must climb the cliff,” I said to Pompoo. “It’s the only way for us to reach Sir Kato’s castle.”

  “I suppose it is,” said Pompoo.

  So we began climbing up the cliff, which rose so high and was awfully steep.

  “If only the rocks weren’t so steep,” said Pompoo. “If only the night weren’t so dark and we weren’t so small and alone.”

  We climbed and climbed. It took so long and it was so dark. But we clung firmly with our hands and feet, we looked for crevices and outcroppings, we held on and kept climbing. Sometimes I was so scared and believed that I couldn’t go on and that I would fall down, that it would be the end. But at the last moment I always found something to hold. It was as if the rocks themselves stuck a small ledge under my foot when I started to fall. Maybe even the rocks hated Sir Kato and gladly wanted to help the one who had come to fight him.

  Sky-high over the water stood Sir Kato’s castle, and sky-high we climbed to reach the castle wall, which was at the top of the cliff.

  “Soon we’ll be there,” I whispered to Pompoo. “Soon we’ll climb over the wall, and then. . . .”

  I heard voices! The spies were talking to each other in the darkness, two black spies that kept watch up on the wall.

  “Search! Search everywhere!” said one of them. “Orders from Sir Kato that the enemy must be captured. The enemy who rode on the white colt must be caught. It is Sir Kato’s command. Search the caves in the mountains, search among the trees of the forest, search on the water and in the air, search near and far, search everywhere!”

  “Search near, search near!” said the other. “We search near. Maybe the enemy is among us. Maybe he climbs up the cliff tonight. Search everywhere!”

  My heart nearly stopped beating when I saw him light a torch. If his torch shone below the wall, he would see us. And if he saw us, it would be the end. He would only need to reach out his long spear and give us a push. Then he’d never need to search again for the enemy who rode on the white colt. There would just be a little cry as we tumbled down into the Dead Lake and vanished forever.

  “Search! Search everywher
e!” said one of the spies. “Shine your torch over the castle wall. Maybe the enemy is climbing up right now. Search everywhere!”

  The other lifted the torch in his hand and leaned out over the wall. The light fell on the face of the cliff and we huddled together and trembled like two mice hunted by the cat. The light from the torch came closer, it crept along the wall and came closer and closer.

  “Now,” whispered Pompoo, “now . . . Oh, Mio, it’s the end!”

  But then something strange happened. Out from across the lake flew a flock of birds. All the Bewitched Birds swept in on rushing wings. One of them rushed straight toward the torch and it fell from the spy’s hand. We saw a streak of fire falling down through the air, and we heard a hissing sound as the torch went out and sank into the lake. But down toward the water fell another streak of fire. The bird who had saved us was on fire. With flaming wings it sank into the waves of the Dead Lake.

  We were so sad about the bird.

  “Thank you, poor little bird,” I whispered, although I knew the bird couldn’t hear and would never hear anything more.

  I wanted to cry for the bird, but I was forced to think of the spies now. We still weren’t over the wall, many dangers still awaited us.

  The spies were so angry at the bird. They stood on the wall just above us. I could see their horrible black hoods and hear their hoarse voices as they whispered secretively to each other.

  “Search! Search everywhere!” they said. “Maybe the enemy is farther away; maybe he is climbing the castle wall somewhere else. Search everywhere!”