And soon the others were joining in. “Woffor did un do that? Broke our roof, woffor did un?”
Ronia realized that she had stuck her foot into their underground hole. The rumphobs made these holes for themselves when they could not find a nice rotten tree to live in.
“I couldn’t help it,” she said. “Help me get my leg out!”
But the rumphobs just stared at her and sighed as morosely as before. “Un’s stuck in t’roof, woffor did un do it?”
Ronia was growing impatient. “Help me then, and I’ll go away!” But it was as if they did not hear or understand. They just stared blankly at her and ran quickly back to their hole. She could hear their irritable muttering down there, but suddenly they began to shriek and howl, as if they were pleased about something.
“She do go!” they shrieked. “She do swing there! She go!”
And Ronia could feel something hanging from her foot, something heavy.
“Li’l boy, he hang good there,” shrieked the rumphobs. “See un’s cradle! We mun have nasty ol’ foot in roof.”
But Ronia had no desire to lie in the cold and snow holding up the cradle for some stupid rumphobs. She tried again; she tugged and jerked as hard as she could to free herself. And the rumphobs cheered.
“Lil’ boy, he be rockin’ fine, see!”
You must not be frightened in Matt’s Forest; they had been telling her that since she was small, and she had tried to arm herself against fear. But sometimes it was no good. Just now it was no good. What if she couldn’t get free? What if she lay here and froze to death this very night! She saw the dark snow clouds over the forest; there was more snow coming, lots of snow! Perhaps she would lie hidden underneath it, dead and frozen stiff, rocking a little rumphob on her dangling foot till spring! Not till then would Matt be able to come and find his poor little daughter who had frozen to death in the wintry forest.
“No, no!” she yelled. “Help! Come and help me!”
But who was there to hear her in these empty woods? Not a soul. She knew that. But she went on shouting till she could shout no longer.
And then she heard the rumphobs grumbling again. “Un’s bin and stopped rockin’ now! Woffor did un?”
Then Ronia heard them no more, for she had seen the wild harpy. Like a beautiful great black bird of prey, the harpy came swooping across the forest, high up under the dark clouds, then dropped down and came in closer. Straight toward Ronia she flew, and Ronia closed her eyes. Nothing could save her now, she knew.
Screeching and cackling, the harpy landed beside her. “Pretty little human,” she screamed shrilly, pulling at Ronia’s hair. “Just taking a little rest, oh, yes, ho, ho!”
She cackled again, and it was the most horrid sound. “You’ll have to work for us! Up in the mountains! Till the blood runs! Or else we’ll scratch you, or else we’ll claw you!”
The harpy began to tear and slash at Ronia with her sharp claws, and when Ronia still lay motionless, she flew into a rage.
“Do you want me to scratch and claw you?”
She bent over Ronia, her stony black eyes gleaming wickedly. Then she made another effort to get Ronia free, but no matter how she tugged and tore, it was no use, and in the end she tired of it.
“Then 1’11 go and fetch my sisters,” she screamed. “We’ll get you tomorrow. You’ll never take another rest here, never, never!” And off she flew over the treetops and disappeared toward the mountain peaks.
Tomorrow when the wild harpies come, there will be nothing here but a lump of ice, Ronia thought.
There was silence now down in the rumphobs’ hole. The whole forest was silent, waiting for the night to come. Ronia was not waiting for anything else herself. She lay still; she had given up struggling. It would come now, she thought, the last cold, dark, lonely night, which would put an end to her.
The snow had begun to fall, and big flakes settled softly on her face. They melted there and mixed with her tears, for she was crying now. She was thinking of Matt and Lovis. She would never see them again, and no one would ever be happy again in Matt’s Fort. Poor Matt, he would lose his senses with sorrow! And there would be no Ronia there to comfort him as she used to do when he was sad. No, there was no comfort to be given now, and none to be had, none at all!
Then she heard someone speaking her name. She heard it clearly and distinctly, but she knew that it must be a dream, and that made her cry again. Never more, except in dreams, would anyone call her by name. And soon she would not even dream any longer.
But then she heard the voice once again.
“Ronia, shouldn’t you go home now? “
She opened her eyes reluctantly, and there stood Birk—yes, there stood Birk, on his skis!
“I found your ski down at the bottom, and that was pure luck, because otherwise you’d have gone on lying here. ” He put the ski down on the snow beside her. “Need help, do you? “
Then she was crying in earnest, so loudly and so desperately that she was ashamed. She was crying so hard that she could not answer him, but when he bent down to lift her up, she flung her arms around him and muttered frenziedly, “Don’t leave me! Don’t ever leave me again! “
That made him smile. “No, as long as you keep a rope’s length away! Let go of me and stop howling and I’ll see if I can get you free. “
He took off his skis, lay down beside her, and thrust his hand as far as he could into the hole. And when he had worked at it for a long time, the miracle happened. Ronia could pull her leg up— she was free!
But the rumphobs in their hole were angry, and their little one whimpered, “Woke li’l boy up, an’ ‘e got dirt in’s eyes, woffor did un do it? “
Ronia cried; she could not stop herself. Birk handed her the ski.
“Stop howling, ” he said. “Otherwise you’ll never get home. “
Ronia drew a deep breath. Yes, the crying was over now. She got to her feet and tested her leg to see if it would hold her.
“I’ve got to try, ” she said. “And you’ll come too, won’t you? “
“I’ll come too,” said Birk.
Ronia set off and made the run down the slope, and Birk followed her. All the time, as she skied painfully homeward in the swirling snow, she had him behind her. Time and again she had to make sure that he was still there. She was so frightened that he might suddenly disappear and leave her on her own. But he was following her, a rope’s length away, until they were nearly at the Wolf’s Neck. There they had to part. From there Birk would take a secret way back to Borka’s Keep.
They stood silently for a time in the falling snow, trying to say good-bye. It was difficult, Ronia felt, and she wanted with all her strength to keep him there.
“Listen, Birk,” she said. “I wish you were my brother.”
Birk laughed. “Why shouldn’t I be, if you like, robber’s daughter!”
“I do like,” she said. “But only if you call me Ronia.”
“Ronia, sister mine,” said Birk, and then he was gone in the whirling snow.
Six
It went on snowing that night over matt’s fort and the surrounding woods, and even Noddle-Pete could not remember a worse snowstorm. It took four men to push back the great fortress gate enough for a man to squeeze out and dig away the worst of the drifts. Noddle-Pete stuck his nose out and saw the desolate white landscape where everything was now hidden under the snow. The Wolf’s Neck was completely walled up. No one was going to be able to get through that tunneled path until spring if the winter went on as it had begun, said Noddle-Pete.
“Listen, Fooloks,” he said, “if digging snow is what you like best, I can promise you much joy for quite a time.”
Noddle-Pete’s predictions were usually right, and he was right this time too. For a long time the snow fell day and night. The robbers dug and swore, but at least there was one thing in their favor: they no longer needed to keep watch on Borka’s followers, either at the Wolf’s Neck or at Hell’s Gap.
“
Of course, that Borka is more stupid than a pig,” said Matt, “but he’s not quite so impossibly stupid as to want to fight in snow up to his armpits.”
Matt was not that stupid either, and in any case he was not particularly troubled about Borka just now. He had other things to think about. Ronia was ill for the first time in her life. The morning after the day in the wintry forest, which had so nearly been her last, she woke up with a high fever and felt to her astonishment that she had no desire at all to get up and start living, as she usually did.
“What’s the matter with you?” shouted Matt, flinging himself on his knees by her bed. “What are you saying? You’re not really ill, are you?”
He took her hand and felt how hot it was; in fact her whole body was burning, he realized, and he grew frightened. He had never seen her like this before. She had been bursting with health all her life. But here she lay now, this daughter whom he loved so much, and at once he knew. He knew what was going to happen! Ronia was going to be taken from him; she was going to die; he felt it, until his heart was sore within him. And he had no idea what to do with his terrible sorrow. He would have liked to bang his head against the wall and bellow as he used to do. But he must not terrify the poor child; at least he had sense enough for that. So he simply laid his hand on her burning forehead and murmured, “It’s a good thing to keep warm, my Ronia! That’s what you have to do when you’re ill.”
But Ronia knew her father, and in spite of the fever burning inside her she tried to comfort him.
“Don’t be silly, Matt! This is nothing. It could be much worse.”
It could have been so much worse that I might have lain hidden under the snow from winter to spring, she thought. Poor Matt, once again she imagined how it would have tortured him, and tears rose to her eyes. Matt saw them and thought she was lying there mourning because she was to die so young.
“My little one, you’ll soon be fit again. Don’t cry,” he said, swallowing back his own sobs bravely. “But where’s your mother?” he roared, and rushed weeping to the door.
Why was Lovis not standing ready with her soothing herbs, when Ronia’s life was hanging by a hair, he would like to know!
He looked for Lovis in the sheepfold, but she was not there. The sheep bleated hungrily in their pen, but they soon realized that the right person had not arrived. For this one stood with his shaggy head bowed on the edge of the pen, crying so desperately that they were all scared to death.
Matt went on bawling until Lovis, having finished her duties with the goats and chickens, walked in through the door. Then he roared, “Woman, why are you not with your sick child?”
“Have I a sick child?” was Lovis’s calm reply. “I didn’t know. But as soon as I have given the sheep what they need—”
“I can do that! Go to Ronia!” he shouted, and then snuffled more quietly. “If she’s still alive!”
He began to toss out bundles of aspen from their provisions, and when Lovis had gone, he fed the sheep and lamented to them, “You don’t know what it’s like having children! You don’t know what it feels like to lose your dearest little lamb!”
He stopped suddenly, remembering that they had all had lambs in the spring. And what had become of them? Nothing but roast mutton!
Lovis gave her daughter soothing herb juices to drink, and in three days Ronia was well again, to Matt’s amazement and joy. Ronia was herself again, though perhaps a little more thoughtful than before. She had done a lot of thinking during her three days in bed. What was going to happen now with Birk? She had a brother, yes, but how were they ever going to meet? It would have to be in secret; she could never tell Matt that she had a Borka for a friend. It would be like hitting him over the head with a sledgehammer, only much worse, and he would be more heartbroken and more furious than ever before. Ronia sighed. Why did her father have to be so violent about everything? No matter whether he was happy or angry, it was always the same: he was savage and stormy enough for a whole band of robbers.
Ronia was not used to lying to her father. She just kept quiet about anything she knew was going to make him sad or angry. Or both sad and angry, which he would be if she told him about Birk. But it could not be helped; now that she had a brother she wanted to be with him, even if she had to steal away to do it.
But where could she steal to in all this snow? She could not get out into the forest, because the Wolf’s Neck was blocked, and in any case these winter woods scared her a little. She had had enough of them for a while.
The snowstorms continued to whine around Matt’s Fort, getting a little worse all the time, and at last Ronia realized just how bad things were: she would not be able to see Birk again until spring. He was as far away from her as if there were a thousand miles between them.
It was all the snow’s fault. Ronia became more and more annoyed with it with each day that passed, and the robbers loathed it as much as she did. They cast lots every morning for guard duty. Some of them had to labor up the path to the spring where they fetched the water. It was halfway to the Wolf’s Neck, and it was hard work getting there, with the snow whirling around your ears, and then lugging back heavy buckets of water, enough for both men and beasts.
“You’re as idle as oxen,” Lovis accused the men, “except when you’re fighting and robbing—then you work hard.”
And the idle robbers looked forward to spring, when their robbers’ life could start again. They passed the long hours of waiting by shoveling more and more snow and cutting new skis and looking after their weapons and grooming their horses and playing dice and dancing robber dances and singing robber ditties in front of the fire as they had always done.
Ronia played dice with them and sang and danced as well, but she was looking forward to spring just as much as the robbers were, and to her woods in springtime. Then at last she would see Birk again. They would be able to talk, and she could find out if he really did want to be her brother as he had promised out in the snowstorm.
But waiting was hard, and Ronia hated being shut in. It made her restless, and the days seemed long. So one day she made her way down to the underground cellar vaults where she had not been for a long time. Old dungeons were something she did not care for, and there were many of them down there, blasted into the rock wall. Of course Noddle-Pete insisted that nobody had been kept captive there since time immemorial, when great men and small kings had ruled from Matt’s Fort, long before it had become a robber stronghold.
All the same, when Ronia came down into the musty cold of the vaults, she felt that something of the moaning and sighing of those long-dead prisoners still clung to the rock walls, and it gave her a creepy feeling. She lit up the darkness of the dungeons with her horn lantern, the corners where the poor wretches had lived without hope of ever again seeing the light of day. She stood quietly for a while, grieving for the cruelties that had taken place in Matt’s Fort. Then, with a shudder, she pulled her wolfskin coat closer around her and trudged on through the underground passages that stretched past the dungeons under the entire fortress. She had been there with Noddle-Pete, and he was the one who had shown her what the storm had done on the night when she was born. Not content with opening up Hell’s Gap, it had crushed the rock directly under the gap as well, and therefore the underground passage had caved in in the middle and filled up with rubble.
“This is the end. Here you must stop,” said Ronia, just as Noddle-Pete had said when she had been there with him.
But then she began to think. On the other side of the rockfall the passage went on, she knew, for Noddle-Pete had told her that too. It had always irritated her that she could go no farther, and now more than ever, because—who could tell? —surely somewhere on the other side of all this rubble there would be Birk.
She stood gazing thoughtfully at the heaps of fallen stones. And at last her thinking was done.
For some time after that they saw little of Ronia in the stone hall. She disappeared every morning, no one knew where, and neither Matt nor
Lovis wondered where she was. Of course she would be shoveling snow like all the others, they thought, and in any case they were used to her coming and going as she liked.
But Ronia was not shoveling snow. She was moving rubble until her arms and back ached. And when she tumbled into bed at night, exhausted, there was one thing she knew for sure: never again in her life was she going to move stones, big or little. But morning had scarcely dawned before she was back in the underground passage, setting to with furious energy, filling bucket after bucket with stones. She hated them, all those heaped-up stones, so much that they should have melted. But they did not; they continued to lie there, and she herself had to haul them away, bucket by bucket, and empty them in the nearest dungeon.
There came a day when the dungeon was full and the heap of stones had sunk to a point where with a bit of difficulty it should be possible to climb over to the other side—if she dared! Now Ronia knew it was time to think. Did she dare walk straight into Borka’s Keep? And what would happen to her there? She did not know, but what she did know was that she was on dangerous ground. All the same, there was nothing so dangerous that she would not try it in order to reach Birk. She longed for him. How that had happened she had no idea. After all, she had detested him and wished him and all the Borka robbers at the bottom of Hell’s Gap, and now here she stood, wanting only to reach the other side of the rubble and see if she could find Birk.
Ronia, The Robber's Daughter Page 5
