The Ice People 3

by The Step Daughter (Legend of the Ice People #3)

  Chapter 12

  Sol rushed restlessly through the streets of Oslo in search of her lord and master from the underworld. She was spending long hours decorating and furnishing Liv’s new home, but found that she just couldn’t relax. Every day Sol went to look for her lord and master from the underworld, but she never caught as much as a glimpse of him. However, she’d only been in Oslo for three days when she got herself into serious trouble.

  She had been out to buy something for the house. She stood at one of Oslo’s market stalls, looking for things to put in Liv’s house. That particular day she stood at one of the stalls about to buy a beautifully tanned and decorated leather bedspread that would look perfect in the smallest bedroom. A lot of the furniture and household goods had been sent from the old home, but things were still needed. The tanner had just laid out the bedspread, and Sol turned to him to pay for it when a middle class lady pushed in front of her and grabbed it.

  “That’s mine! I’ll take it!”

  Sol protested vehemently. “No! Wait! Now look here ...!”

  The seller was a weak man who refused to choose sides and he simply let the woman have her way. He just did as he was asked by the one who shouted the loudest.

  Sol was absolutely enraged, so angry in fact that she forgot to use her common sense. She noticed that the woman wore a skirt that was tied around the waist.

  “May your skirt fall down, you old bitch,” hissed Sol between clenched teeth. “Then everybody can see that you’re just a roly-poly pudding!’

  Sol’s wish was so intense that the knot on the woman’s skirt came untied and the heavy skirt fell to the ground in front of all those around her. Needless to say, everybody laughed.

  While the lady was panicking and trying to regain her dignity, she screamed repeatedly: “Get her! Get the witch with the evil eyes!”

  Sol couldn’t give a damn. She was so embittered that she just hissed at the woman and let herself be taken prisoner. With a crowd of town people following, she was marched between two burly men to the mayor’s office in a nearby building.

  Sol felt that all this had nothing to do with her. People were just so small-minded and lousy. The one who protected her was a far more powerful guardian – he’d even adopted human form in order to come and find her!

  They took Sol to a hall where several very important-looking gentlemen were seated, engaged in conversation. The crowd of people was asked to stay outside while the two men led her in and bowed low.

  One of them announced in a loud voice: “This woman has practiced witchcraft in the street. There’s no doubt about it.”

  As far as Sol could see, the mayor himself wasn’t in the room. These men, who looked at her now with mild amusement, were the mayor’s closest associates. As she looked back at them, she heard one of them sigh loudly. “I’m so sick and tired of this never-ending fuss about witchcraft! This is something for the priests to deal with, not us!”

  “Now wait a minute,” said another, speaking slowly in Danish.

  “I’m pretty certain that we’ve seen this lady before! Good heavens, I do believe we’ve quite a catch here!”

  Sol looked at him questioningly, but didn’t recognise him.

  “It’s the woman with the yellow cat’s eyes,” he said. “She disappeared from the surface of the earth in Copenhagen after causing quite a scandal. I think we should hold on to this one! She knows a lot more than just her bedside prayers, so they say! After she’d left Copenhagen, it was rumoured that she’d made people wriggle across the floor like snakes – and much more besides.”

  One of the more prominent men shook his head decisively. “No, I don’t care what you say. I’ll have nothing to do with it. One of the count’s wagons is waiting outside. Let’s send this unfortunate woman to him. This is something that he should deal with and not us!”

  The decision was made and Sol was taken to the courtyard at the back of the building to the wagon. At last it was beginning to dawn on her what was about to happen, and she got a bit scared, not for her own sake but for her family. She decided there and then not to reveal her name to anyone.

  The wagon driver, who had prepared the wagon for the journey, turned round to see who he’d be taking with him on his return journey. He was a stocky, handsome-looking man with blonde hair but with a strange emptiness in his eyes.

  When Sol heard him gasp in surprise, she took a closer look – and to her amazement she recognised him at once.

  It was Klaus – her very first conquest and Charlotte’s former stable boy at home. She was about to shout a greeting but stopped herself at the very last minute.

  It had been seven years since they’d met – but she could see immediately from the expression on his face that he’d never forgotten her. Of course! She remembered now that Charlotte had found him a job in the count’s stables. He carried a letter for the count that would probably tell him everything about her.

  At that moment, Sol decided that she’d cut this journey short before they arrived at their destination – and Klaus was going to help her! The soldier would be no problem as long as she could find the right place ...

  Klaus, having obviously recognised her wish for him to stay silent, climbed onto the wagon without looking at her and they started out of the courtyard along a back street away from any crowds. Soon they’d left Oslo behind them and began heading west.

  Before long the soldier leaned forward over the driver’s seat. “We’ve got a real catch this time,” he told Klaus in an undertone. They say that she’s the worst witch in all the Nordic countries!”

  “What, her?” asked Klaus with a quick, frightened glance back at Sol.

  “Oh, indeed! It’s straight to the rack and the wheel for this one, and then to the stake. I expect the bishop will be there to watch the fun when this one burns!”

  “But surely they won’t burn her, will they?” Sol could hear the despair in Klaus’ voice.

  “She’s remarkably beautiful to look at, I must admit. But they’re always the worst ones.”

  A muffled sound of distress came from Klaus and he seemed to shrink down into his seat.

  He continued to drive the wagon in silence, avoiding Sol’s eyes, and as they drove into the woods, the soldier rose from his seat and pushed past Sol with a vindictive grin to take up a position with his legs astride in the rear of the wagon.

  ‘This should be a pretty good place,’ thought Sol while still keeping outwardly calm.

  Then suddenly she let out a shrill piercing scream. It sounded exactly like the noise by a bird of prey as it dived for the kill. At that same moment she picked up a strap that had lain on the floor of the wagon and threw it at the horse’s rump. The sharp points of the buckle bit painfully into its flesh.

  The terrified horse whinnied and bolted, jumping forward and jolting the wagon. The soldier lost his balance and tumbled backward onto the road with a wild cry. The letter he’d been holding fell from his hand into the back of the wagon and he ended up sprawled face down on the road. He watched helplessly as the wagon careered faster and faster into the woods. The horse was running wild and it took all of Klaus and Sol’s combined efforts to restrain and regain control of it. This job was made even more difficult because Klaus had himself been flung off his seat into the back of the wagon as the horse sped off.

  “You’re crazy, Sol” he gasped as he took his seat again. “What do you think the count will say about this?”

  “What do you think he’ll say if I simply let you take me to him?” she replied doggedly, bracing her feet against the boards and grasping the reins. “He’ll burn me at the stake – after he’s tortured me.”

  “No, he mustn’t do that! I’ve seen what they did with one witch – it was horrible!”

  The horse was beginning to calm down now and the wagon was moving more slowly. They’d both regained their breath and Sol smiled suddenly at Klaus.

  “I think I’ll get off here and you can carry on back to your stables.” As s
he spoke, she reached into the back of the wagon and retrieved the letter that the soldier had dropped.

  “No, I can’t arrive home without my prisoner – you know that! I’m going to come with you.”

  “Then hurry before someone sees us.”

  “What about the horse and the wagon?” asked Klaus anxiously.

  “We can’t take the wagon and there’s no time to unhitch the horse. The soldier could be chasing after us.”

  “No, he won’t,” said Klaus glumly. “I don’t think he’ll ever be able to run again.”

  “Come on, let’s go,” said Sol impatiently, far less concerned about the fate of the soldier than he was.

  Klaus gave the horse a sound slap on its rear. “Home with you! Back to the farm!” he said in a kind voice.

  With the empty wagon rattling along behind it, the horse walked off through the forest. The sound of its progress could be heard for a long time after Sol and Klaus left the road and headed off across a tract of marshland and bare rocks. At first they ran as fast as they could, but eventually they had to slow down because of the rough ground.

  “Where are we?” asked Sol breathlessly. They were standing on a ridge and below them in every direction they saw only forest. Far off to the south they could catch a glimpse of water. It was the Oslo fjord.

  “I don’t know exactly where we are,” answered Klaus, breathing with difficulty. “North of Akershus fortress, at any rate.”

  I’d figured that out for myself, thought Sol, giving Klaus a shrewd glance. He was still simple and clumsy, but she could see why as a fourteen-year-old she’d been so attracted to him – then as now it had been his rough, strapping build, his innocent expression, and his very noticeable masculinity.

  Looking him up and down, she chuckled. “Well, Klaus, my old friend. This was certainly an unexpected meeting, eh?”

  He looked a little crestfallen. “You bring bad luck with you. You aren’t really a witch, are you?”

  “What would you like me to be?”

  Klaus stared down at the mossy ground. “My girl,” he said shyly.

  “Then that is what I’ll be!” said Sol in an unexpectedly gentle voice.

  “But what are we to do now?”

  It wasn’t so easy for Klaus to follow more complicated thought processes and he dug absentmindedly at the moss with the toe of his boot and didn’t answer.

  “I can’t return to Linden Avenue again,” explained Sol. “The authorities don’t yet know my name and I want to protect my family. I can’t return to Oslo either because they’ll recognise me by my eyes and then I’ll be arrested again.”

  “And I can’t return to my stables,” said Klaus. “Anyway, I don’t want to. It wasn’t so good in the service of the count.”

  Sol had noticed a number of scars on his cheek that might have come from a whip, and he touched them distractedly as he continued. “The only place that was nice was at Graastensholm. If only I could go back there!”

  “I don’t think you can. I heard long afterwards that you were moved to another place to make sure that you and I were kept apart.”

  From its perch in one of the few tall pines high above, a kite screeched. The noise echoed eerily in the silence and Sol looked up at it thoughtfully.

  “They didn’t succeed though,” she muttered. “We found each other this time, you and I.”

  Klaus sighed as he thought back. “Ever since we were together, Sol, I’ve had one great wish – and that is to do it again!”

  “But surely, my dear friend, you’ve had other girls?”

  “Yes, but they were nothing. They were like dead cows!”

  Sol laughed out loud. She was flattered. “But where are we to go now?”

  Klaus looked up in the sky for inspiration. “I was just thinking ...”

  ‘Excellent,’ thought Sol, but she didn’t say anything.

  “I was just thinking we could go home to my place,” said Klaus.

  “To the count’s stables, you mean? That would be a very stupid thing to do.”

  “No, no – I mean my home.”

  Hmm! Well, even Klaus had to come from somewhere, thought Sol. Maybe she’d always thought of him as a changeling who’d appeared from some soggy bog like a troll and been left to plod unhappily around in the world of humans.

  “But what will your family say?”

  “I don’t have a family. Nobody lives there as far as I know.”

  This news made Sol smile. “So why are we standing here waiting – is it far?”

  “It’s a bit of a distance.”

  It certainly was ‘a bit of a distance’, and it wasn’t until the next evening that they reached the wretched little hut high up on the side of a mountain. Sol wanted to know what part of Norway they were in, but Klaus had no idea. All he could tell her was that his home was called Plassen - ‘The Place’. All Sol could make out was they were somewhere north and west of Oslo and Linden Avenue – and quite a good distance from them as well.

  The timbers of the small building had stood up well and Sol and Klaus quickly began to clear up the hut and make it comfortable, tidy and warm. They lit a fire and that evening, Klaus was able to relive his dream. Afterwards, as they fell silent, Klaus lay quietly with Sol in his arms, shedding silent tears of joy.

  And Sol? Well, she was actually a little moved. Klaus was still fond of her in an uncomplicated, down-to-earth sort of way. He asked nothing of her, accepted everything she did – and he was also physically very well endowed! If any man on earth was able to love Sol for her own sake, it was Klaus. Or was he only attracted to her beauty? No, she mustn’t doubt – not Klaus!

  She reflected that Klaus would do for the time being because, to be honest, she had very little choice now that she was too well known to show herself in public.

  For a short moment, she yearned for the man at the inn, who was the real lover of her secret fantasies – the Prince of the Underworld.

  Somehow Sol knew deep inside herself that one day she’d see him again.

  ***

  No one at Linden Avenue had any idea what had happened to Sol. She’d just disappeared from the new house. When they asked the household staff, a maid told them that she’d simply gone out shopping and hadn’t returned. “Ah! Sol will always be Sol,” said Tengel, putting on a brave face, but the fact was that they’d all worried themselves half to death during the previous week. “I suppose she just wanted to head off somewhere.”

  “Yes, I’m sure she has,” answered Dag, who’d come to visit, bringing his Mum and Jacob Skille. “That would be typical of Sol.”

  Liv was quietly seated at Dag’s side, looking at him discreetly from time to time. Outwardly she’d got over her depression but in her subconscious mind she carried a burden of guilt, planted there so cruelly by Laurents and his mother.

  Somehow a disastrous marriage always feels like a defeat, even for the innocent party, and this wasn’t easy to hide. Liv was one of the few religious members of the family and it was obvious that she felt she was a failure although she was now sometimes able to smile at the world.

  Then Liv suddenly said: “I really miss Sol and it was so nice sharing a room with her. She was marvellous when I suffered from nightmares. Some nights she’d comfort me as a mother comforts her child and other nights she’d scold me for being so stupid as to believe their evil lies. Now there’s nobody to comfort me at night. Sometimes I just wish I were dead.”

  The others stared at her in disbelief.

  “Do you suffer from nightmares, Liv?” asked Silje, shocked.

  At that moment, it was as if Liv had been talking to herself. Now she came to herself again.

  “What? Yes, I do suffer from evil dreams. Now I can’t fall asleep again after them because Sol isn’t here.”

  “But, my dear Liv, we mustn’t allow this to torment you,” said Charlotte indignantly. “Please forgive me if I am being too personal, but I happen to know that there’s nothing Dag would love more than to mar
ry you. Why don’t you accept now?”

  “Now?” said Liv, her eyes wide open with surprise. “It’s much too soon.”

  “But you desperately need somebody who can take care of you.”

  Liv looked at the floor. “Or for someone that I can take care of so that I don’t become too self-absorbed,” she said quietly.

  “You’re most welcome to take care of me,” said Dag with a smile.

  “Would that really be wise, so soon after Laurents’ death?” objected Silje, who in spite of everything, was the most conventional of them all. “What I mean to say is: Won’t people be unpleasant to you so soon after Laurents’ death?”

  Charlotte looked at Silje for a long moment. “I’ve never liked gossip and rumours, but this time I plan to start some rumours of my own. I’ll overwhelm our neighbours and friends with tales of how horrible Laurents and his mother really were. Then they’re bound to feel sympathetic towards Liv – and Liv does deserve their sympathy! I’ll tell them of the awful loneliness and the nightmares. I’ll tell everyone how much love she has to share and how much Dag loves her.”

  Silje nodded: “Some people are bound to gossip – but I think the majority will be tolerant. But what about the priest?”

  “I’ll take care of the priest,” said Charlotte. After I donated that beautiful candelabra to his church, he wouldn’t dare object. Otherwise I’ll take it back!”

  Dag smiled. “Mum, you’re terrific!”

  “It shouldn’t be a big wedding, though,” said Silje.

  “Why do you decide all this without asking me?” said Liv in a desperate whisper. “Don’t you understand that I can’t marry again? Never ever again? I’m useless, hopeless, and not worthy of anyone’s love. Besides, I can’t get pregnant.”

  “Now, now!” said Tengel. “You can’t be sure of that. It could just as well have been Laurents’ fault.”

  Dag butted in: “None of us here thinks that you’re useless or hopeless. Surely you know that?!”