The Land of the Silver Apples - Farmer Nancy - Страница 36

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“I imagine she needs time to recover,” said Jack. “I don’t know how long she’s been here.” He noted that Thorgil’s clothes were stained dark green and her boots were the color of tree bark. It was as though she’d been turning into part of the forest. Perhaps she had been.

“One of my owners refused to feed me for three weeks for spoiling one of his shirts,” Pega remarked. She was huddled in a fold of the rock with her arms hugging her knees for warmth. The sun had gone behind the mountain, and the air had turned chill. “All I had was what I could find in the rubbish heap. You can’t believe how good fish heads taste after three weeks.”

Thorgil opened her eyes and looked straight at the girl. “You’re a thrall,” she said.

“What’s a thrall?” asked Pega.

Jack swore under his breath. “Pay no attention. Northmen like picking fights more than bears like honey. Even their gods insult one another.”

“‘Thrall’ means ‘slave’,” Thorgil said in perfectly clear Saxon.

“I am not! Jack freed me!”

“I was a slave once,” Jack said. “I’m not ashamed of it.”

“You should be,” Thorgil said with a wolfish smile.

You were too,thought Jack, but he bit back the words before they slipped out. Taunting Thorgil was a sport that had to be conducted very carefully. “Perhaps we should look for a place to sleep,” he said. “Anyone want a bed of moss?”

“No!”Thorgil cried, which showed Jack how terrified she’d been. It wasn’t like her to admit fear.

“I don’t understand. We’ve spent two nights in the forest, and nothing happened to us until this morning,” said Pega. “It’s like the trees suddenly woke up.”

“Or we ran into the wrong trees,” said Jack. “I suppose some are good and some are bad, like people. Anyhow, we need shelter before it gets completely dark. I saw a cleft in the rocks earlier.”

The cleft turned out to be a tiny valley hidden in the side of the mountain. On one side of a stream was a shelf of rock wide enough to sleep on. At the upper end was an ancient apple tree so coated in lichen, it appeared almost silver. It was covered in white flowers that added to its ghostly appearance. For a wonder, it bore masses of pale yellow fruit as well. Or at least Jack thought they were yellow. The night was coming on so rapidly, it was difficult to tell.

“Do you think it’s safe to eat them?” whispered Pega.

Jack climbed up to the tree. The air around it was filled with a wild sweetness unlike the flowers of the lime trees the night before. Those lulled you into sleep while these made you feel like something exciting was about to happen. “I think this is one of the good trees,” he said.

Pega gathered some of the apples littering the ground. “Thank you kindly,” she said, bowing to the tree.

Thorgil snorted. Jack guessed she thought it demeaning to say thank youto a tree. Once again, they could build no fire, but the air in the tiny valley was still and not too cold. They feasted on apples and the remaining round of cheese, with water from the stream. Pega sang a song about a fox and a hen who kept foiling the fox’s plans to eat her. It had many verses, and both Jack and Thorgil joined in for the chorus. “My mother used to sing this when I was very small,” said Thorgil.

“Mine too,” said Jack, strangely moved. Thorgil almost never mentioned her mother, who had been sacrificed in the Northman lands.

“Mine too, probably, if I could remember her,” added Pega.

They snuggled together for warmth and slept soundly in spite of the hardness of their bed. Jack woke in the middle of the night to see the full moon flooding down into the narrow valley. The apple tree shone with an unearthly brightness, and then it did, indeed, appear to be made of silver. That’s odd,thought Jack, settling back beside Pega and Thorgil. I could have sworn the moon was full two nights ago.

Thorgil’s shout awakened Jack and Pega. They scrambled to their feet and saw the shield maiden, knife drawn, staring at the apple tree. “Something was here,” she said. “I saw it just as my eyes opened, but it disappeared.”

Jack joined her in looking around. “What did it look like?”

“Hard to say. It moved so quickly. It was speckled green and brown, shorter than a man, and it had a face.”

“Face?”

Thorgil smiled, as she tended to do when she had something unpleasant to say. “It was like a toad or a newt—wide, flat nostrils and a lipless mouth. I forgot to mention it was standing over Pega.”

“Bedbugs!” cried Pega.

“It was stroking your hair.”

“Stop trying to frighten her,” Jack said. He climbed up to the apple tree and searched. There was nothing. Behind the tree the rock was seamed with many possible footholds. Whatever it was could easily have escaped.

“I swear by Odin I saw a creature,” said Thorgil. Jack didn’t doubt her. She was no liar, even if she took a malicious pleasure in frightening people. In a way he was glad she’d seen something. A giant toad was better than some of the things he’d been imagining.

“It’s left us more of those pots,” he said, kneeling by what appeared to be large mushrooms sprouting from the base of the tree.

Pega and Thorgil climbed up beside him. As before, the pots contained warm bread, butter, honey, and cheese. “This is a wonder,” said Thorgil, letting the mouthwatering smell of bread waft over her face. “What magic brought these here?”

“I suppose our visitor left them,” said Pega.

“I’ve heard that some creatures charm mud to look like food,” remarked the shield maiden. “It turns back into mud in your stomach.”

“Don’t you ever have anything good to say?” Jack snapped.

Thorgil grinned.

They carried the food down to the shelf of rock by the stream and made a pleasant meal, with apples for dessert. “Now I want to know how you got here and how you got trapped in the moss,” Jack told Thorgil. “I didn’t ask you yesterday because you looked… tired.” He’d been about to say frightened,but he knew that would only make her angry.

“We were on a quest,” the shield maiden began.

“We?” queried Jack.

“Skakki, Sven the Vengeful, Eric the Rash—the usual crowd.”

“And a boy I didn’t recognize.”

Thorgil straightened up in surprise. “How did you know that?”

“I’m a skald,” Jack said airily. “It’s my business to know such things.”

“Then you can figure out the rest of it,” snarled Thorgil.

“Please. I don’t know beans,” interrupted Pega. “I’d like to know what such a famous warrior is doing on our shores.”

Jack mentally congratulated the girl for hitting on the one compliment likely to make Thorgil cooperate.

“We were doing our usual harvesting of cowardly Saxon villages,” the shield maiden continued. She paused to let the insult sink in. Jack heroically kept silent. “But we had a tip about a secret passage into Elfland. Rune overheard it at the slave market— youremember the place, Jack.”

“Go on,” he said tensely.

“Skakki was bargaining with the Picts, and they didn’t have enough weapons to trade for what we’d got. They offered to leave the shortfall on a deserted beach. Well, that kind of promise is worth about as much as a handful of dirt. But before Skakki said no, Rune pulled him aside. He’d been listening to the Picts argue. They didn’t want to reveal the location of the beach because a cave on it led to Elfland.When Skakki heard that, he decided to take the chance.”

“Why would you want to go to Elfland?” Pega asked.

“For the plunder, of course! They have silver and jewels, fine horses, too. We put ashore, and believe it or not, the weapons were there. We searched the beach, and Eric Pretty-Face found the cave—”

“Eric Pretty-Face?” said Pega.

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