by Karen Swan
Signy saw how Nils’ shoulders dropped in relief as they joined the dance too, Sofie defiant and gleaming in the firelight, her dark hair shining, skin aglow. And as the fiddle started up and the dancers began to move, the flames danced but Sofie danced harder – twisting and leaping, touching the blonde sky with her own fiery fingers as she enchanted her partner with her passion and grace.
On and on they whirled, almost the entire village stopping to watch, and Signy saw then how it would be; she felt a rock in her throat, tears pressing against her eyes as the two premier couples, the town’s new generation, danced in the twilight: Margit would marry Rag, and Sofie would have Nils. They were good matches all round – land with power; beauty with land. And when at last the music stopped, the cheer that erupted could have flattened the mountains. The young men bowed as the girls curtsied and they returned to the spectators, all of them panting and flushed. Signy saw their father taking Margit proudly by the chin and kissing her cheek. He was ruddy from the beer and in high spirits. Martin Omenas was too, and though the two men did not shake hands together, confirming a pact, it was evident they were both of the same mind as to the desirability of the union.
‘I guess we should go back,’ Kari sighed, taking the last armful of branches from Signy and fastening them to the eaves of the stable. ‘You are the Midsummer bride, after all.’
‘It’s not about me,’ Signy said flatly. It never was and never would be. But together, they lolloped back into the village, arms swinging, skirts rustling.
‘Hungry?’ Kari asked, steering her over to the table where the food was laid out. They ate with their fingers, a ravenous hunger coming upon them as the excitement and anticipation for the party was swapped over for the reality of a late night.
Signy was licking her lips after a chicken drumstick when she felt a hard pinch against her arm.
‘Ow!’ She turned but no one was there; a man was walking away, though. Dark-haired, light-footed. Elegant hands . . . ‘I’ll be right back,’ she mumbled to Kari, dropping the bone on the ground and hurrying after him.
She followed him over to the aspen tree, the one where Bluebell liked to nod in the shade in the heat of the day. It was set back from the fire here, in the shadows.
‘Mons?’ she whispered, seeing how he hid behind the trunk.
‘Come here,’ he hissed, motioning desperately for her to move out of sight.
Tentatively, she approached. ‘What is it?’
‘Is it true?’ he asked her, a bleakness in his eyes.
For a moment she didn’t know what he was referring to – but then she saw the look on his face and she knew it was how she had looked watching Nils dance with Sofie.
‘Are they betrothed?’
‘Not . . . not formally. Not yet. But it is expected,’ she said quietly.
He looked away, nodding, his gaze on the distant pass through to the next valley.
‘It has been assumed since they were children that a match would happen.’
Mons looked back at her. ‘Does she love him?’
‘I . . .’ Signy realized that she didn’t know. ‘I’m not sure. I think so. All the girls are wild about him.’
‘Does he love her?’
‘How could he not? Everybody loves Margit.’
‘Yes.’ Mons dropped his head down, looking like he might fold in on himself.
Signy watched him, seeing his anguish. It leapt through him like a jumping fox. ‘Do you love her?’ she asked, almost in a whisper. But the question didn’t need to be asked. The answer lay in his hung head and slack shoulders.
‘I can think of nothing else. These past few weeks have been a torment. I could find no reason to get back up here without arousing suspicion. I thought tonight would never come. And yet now I’m here, I find I daren’t approach her . . .’
‘But you scarcely know her. You were here just a night.’
‘I know and I didn’t sleep then either. I can neither understand nor explain it, but that night her sweet voice filled my head and hasn’t left it since. I didn’t even close my eyes in bed. I tried to believe that if I kept sleep at bay, I could hold off the morning from ever coming and . . . stay here forever.’
Signy looked back towards the crowd. Margit was still standing with their pappa, with Rag and the others. But her gaze was cast down, and every so often she would look around, as though searching for someone. Was she looking for him? For her?
‘I thought it was fate, bringing me all the way up here – to meet her.’ He looked at her with a fierce sorrow. ‘I have been counting the days for this night to come. But now I learn it is already too late. That she is lost to me before she was ever mine.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Signy said sympathetically. ‘I know how bad it feels.’
He stared at her for a moment. ‘. . . You? But what would you know of love? You are only a child.’
Signy’s mouth parted in dismay. ‘I’m fourteen! I’m just . . . little, that’s all! But I’m growing this summer. I’ve already grown an inch.’
He regarded her for a moment, before looking away again. ‘I’m sorry. Of course you have.’
Signy felt the blood rushing through her head, anger and indignation a combustible mix. Why did no one ever take her seriously? Why did they always treat her like a baby? Why did they never think her feelings mattered too? ‘I’m going back,’ she muttered, clenching her fists and beginning to stomp away.
‘Signy, wait,’ he called after her. ‘Please.’
Reluctantly, she turned back.
‘Would you do one thing for me?’ And he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small, slightly wilted posy of flowers. ‘Put these under her pillow. Don’t tell her. Don’t say anything. Just hide them there.’
‘What?’ she frowned. But she already knew the fable; everyone did. If a girl slept with the flowers under her pillow on Midsummer’s, that night she would dream of her future husband.
He stepped forward and pressed them into her palm, curling her fingers around them tightly. ‘It might be the only thing left to me. The only cause for hope.’ And without another word, he turned and walked back up the hill, skirting the crowd, staying in the shadows.
Signy watched him go, feeling torn – the match with Rag was her father’s greatest ambition. To usurp it in any way would be to tear down his long-cherished wish. And yet . . . she had seen the way her sister and Mons had looked at each other that first day. Had the hundred strokes of her hair been done for Rag – or him?
She looked at the flowers in her hand again. Would it be so bad to do as he asked? They were just flowers, there was no actual harm in the request, was there? It was only an old wives’ tale anyway, no different to Kari’s trolls and the bird cherry branches hanging over the cows. Carefully she slid the posy into the pocket of her skirt, the white apron concealing it in deep folds, as she rejoined the party. It was a whimsy and a hope. Nothing more.
What harm could come from it?
Chapter Fifteen
It was so dark by the time Anders got back, all the lights were on in the village houses, reflecting into the water like pinpricks through a sheet of tin. Bo heard the putter of the engine as he brought the rib in to the mooring outside, but as she stood by the window and watched as he cut the power, threw over the ropes and walked up the jetty, she saw that he was alone.
‘Where are the others?’ she asked, pulling the blanket harder around her shoulders as he came through the door a minute later, pulling off his boots with the opposite foot, droplets of melted snow on his orange rubber jacket.
His eyes flashed up to her, as though irritated to find her there. The friendliness of last night had dissipated completely and only this morning’s hostility remained – but was it because of her friends, or her? ‘I dropped them at the bay on the way past. We were late in leaving again and there wasn’t time to bring them back here first.’
‘Oh. Right,’ she said, feeling a crashing disappointment to have missed her
fiancé again; they had spent less than five minutes together in the past few days and most of that had been spent bickering. Meanwhile, his and Lenny’s stories had continued to come off the mountain throughout the afternoon – more laughs, more japes without her – and it had felt like a peculiar form of torture to be watching from the wrong side of the glass. In particular, she felt that if she heard Anna squeal – on camera or off – one more time, she might slap her.
Her eyes fell to the bag she had left packed, ready by the door. Anders saw it too in the same instant, his gaze coming back to hers for a protracted moment before he turned away abruptly. ‘I’m going for a shower.’
She heard him take the stairs, two at a time, as she looked into the vacuum of where he had just been. She didn’t understand this man. He didn’t want her here and yet she had never asked for this. And she wasn’t the one who had insulted him this morning.
As she heard the water come on, she slipped back into the sitting room, hoping she hadn’t used up all the hot water; anticipating that she’d be going back to the shelf farm tonight, she had treated herself to a bubble bath. It would be her last such luxury for a while.
She didn’t know what to do with herself – what to do or where to go – and was still perched on the edge of the sofa when she heard him come back down the stairs ten minutes later. She heard him go straight into the kitchen, where his footsteps stopped abruptly; then they started again and she looked up to find him standing in the doorway.
‘You made dinner.’
‘Just a chicken pie. I thought it was the least I could do, something to thank you for letting me stay here.’ She noticed that he was wearing a shirt with his jeans, and that he had combed his hair. Was he going out? ‘. . . But you can freeze it if you want.’
He frowned. ‘Did you go to the shop?’
‘Yes.’ A large blocky building on the waterfront, she had discovered it was also the post office, pharmacy and dry cleaners too.
‘But you’re sick.’
‘Almost better now. I had intended going back with the others tonight. I don’t want to impose on you any longer than I already have.’
At her pointed words, he shifted his weight uncomfortably. ‘Look, about this morning—’
‘No, really, I get it,’ she said quickly, cutting him off, not wanting to get into it and have him stumble across her inexplicable hurt. ‘I do. And I completely understand. You didn’t ask for any of this. A week ago, you had no idea we were about to descend on your grandmother’s farm, much less that you would have to end up nursing me.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘It’s not, though. You don’t know me. And then, on top of everything, you had to spend a night babysitting me just because I was having some . . . stupid nightmare.’
‘It didn’t sound stupid last night.’
She looked away. Had she screamed out more than once? Before she had woken herself? How bad had it been? ‘Well it was. All nightmares are intrinsically stupid, aren’t they? They don’t mean anything. Not really,’ she mumbled.
He gave her a wry look. ‘Unless you subscribe to the widely held belief that they reveal deeper feelings we don’t want to acknowledge – like anxiety. Or fear.’
She looked up to find him looking at her closely, as though waiting for an explanation. Sometimes, the way he looked at her – she almost felt he knew. She looked away again. ‘Well, anyway, I’m not fearful and I’m better now; that’s the main thing.’
‘No you’re not. You sound like you’re talking underwater.’
She was so shocked by his frankness, a bark of laughter escaped her. ‘Thanks!’
He shrugged, but there was a faint smile on his lips too. They looked at one another for a long moment and she felt them falling into a truce of sorts, the awkwardness from this morning beginning to thaw.
She hugged her arms around herself. ‘So you’re off out then?’ she asked, trying to feather lightness into her voice.
‘Briefly, yes.’ He looked down at himself with slight bemusement. ‘Annika is having her Christmas party tonight. I said I would look in.’
Oh great. More time on her own, Bo thought to herself. ‘That’s nice. She’s lovely, so kind.’
‘She is.’ A small silence bloomed. ‘. . . You would be welcome to come along if you like.’
‘Oh no, no, I couldn’t,’ she demurred quickly, shaking her head.
‘Because you are sick?’
‘No. I really am feeling a lot better. I just took another aspirin. Should keep me going for the next few hours.’
‘So then . . . ?’
‘It’s sweet of you to ask but the last thing you or anyone else wants is me gatecrashing the joint. Go, be with your friends,’ she said, waving him away. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ve got a fire. I’ve got pie. I’ve got Columbo. What more could a girl ask for?’
He watched her. ‘You’ve been stuck inside for three days now. You’re going out of your mind.’
‘No. No, I’m not.’
But he wasn’t listening. ‘What have you got to wear?’ he asked, looking at her grey-marl tracksuit that made her look like an eighties jogger. ‘Jeans?’
‘Uh, I don’t know – maybe, yes, but nothing else that would be appropriate for a party I don’t think. Listen, though, it’s fine. You go.’
He hesitated, looking at her for a long moment as though she was trying to take something from him, before he said: ‘There’s some clothes that might fit you in the bottom drawer upstairs.’
‘But—’
‘You need to get out.’
She pulled a face, on the one hand desperate to get out of here, on the other – ‘Are you sure?’
He rolled his eyes, looking strained. ‘Go. You’re making me late.’
With an excited squeak, she shuffled past him and, grabbing the packed bag from the door, hauled herself upstairs. Pulling the clothes out in a hurry, she found her skinny black jeans but no party top – no shirt or blouse, not even a clean T-shirt. She had here only the ghastly blue nightdress, a bra, two pairs of pants and no socks.
Going over to the chest of drawers, she opened the bottom one. A waft of scent was released: fresh but powdery too; she couldn’t place it. Inside, was a lace shirt; nope. A sea-green cashmere jumper; pretty but too warm. A red and white striped Breton. Oooh . . .
She put it on quickly, finger-combed her hair, pinched her cheeks and came down the stairs three minutes later.
‘That was qui—’ he said in surprise, his voice faltering at the sight of her in his girlfriend’s top.
‘Yes, thanks for this,’ she said, pulling at it slightly. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll wash it before I leave. Your girlfriend will never know.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Oh, but it does, trust me,’ she argued. ‘We know about these things. I’d go mad if Zac loaned out my clothes to another woman.’
Without another word, he handed her the yellow Ridge Riders jacket.
‘Do I need this if we’re only going next door?’ she protested as he shrugged on his North Face one that looked suitable for tracking polar bears.
‘It’s snowing outside. Zip it up and put the hood up too. Is your hair wet?’ he frowned.
She sighed but did as she was told, giving a shocked gasp as he opened the door and an arctic blast blew in. ‘Oh my God, my mother would just love you,’ she shivered, clutching the jacket tighter to her and stepping out into the night.
Annika’s house – not so much next door as up the lane and over the road – was a perfectly symmetrical white feather-lapped cube, with a steep roof and sage-green windows and front door. Tiny white lights hanging down like icicles traced every frame, including the eaves, and illuminated pointed stars were affixed to the windows. Even the orchard of dwarf fruit trees had twinkling lights draped on the canopies, so that the house and garden looked sugar-sprinkled with fallen stars.
Anders walked slowly for her, checking her knee was okay, that she wasn’t getting o
ut of breath, that she was warm enough . . . He gave her his arm to help her balance on the icy paths. But she only suffered one coughing fit and she liked the feeling of the cold against her cheeks. After days under duvets and in front of a fire, the freshness of it felt purifying.
The front door was unlocked and they walked through a storm porch into a good-sized room where a large crowd was gathered, drinking and talking, children running around some 1970s furniture that was unwittingly chic. Faces turned towards them as they walked through, pushing down their hoods, friendly hands outstretched to Anders as he passed, curious gazes fastening upon her. Bo smiled and nodded but she was already questioning the decision to come – she couldn’t hear any English being spoken and she felt strangely exposed, being out without Zac. He was always the more gregarious of the two of them, covering for her anxiousness when they were out, keeping the attention on him and safeguarding her.
‘Are you up to an aquavit?’ Anders asked her. ‘It is warming on the inside.’
‘Sure,’ she nodded. She could do with something to take the edge off her nerves. She followed him into the kitchen, instantly spotting Annika by the worktop. She was rolling out gingerbread dough with a group of children standing beside her, all talking at once with shaped dough-cutters in their hands; another group of children were sitting at the large pine table decorating batches of gingerbread that had already been cut and baked.
‘Hei!’ Annika smiled, calling across the excitable chatter as she spotted them and waving with a floury hand. ‘You made it!’
Anders waved back. ‘Yes!’
‘How are you feeling?’ Annika asked Bo, looking at her too.
‘So much better! Thank you!’
‘You look better! It’s remarkable. That tan I think!’
A little hand appeared in front of Annika, trying to swipe some dough, and Bo laughed as she lightly rapped the boy’s knuckles. ‘Agh-agh-agh,’ she admonished, saying something to him in Norwegian.
‘Anders,’ a deep voice boomed from behind and they both turned to find a tall bearded and bespectacled man standing there. He said something else too, something she couldn’t understand.
