The Snow Queen by Eileen Kernaghan

Author:Eileen Kernaghan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: JUV037000, FIC009030
Publisher: Thistledown Press
Published: 2013-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

At first the day’s marches left Gerda bone-weary, aching in every joint, but now, as her appetite returned, so did her endurance. It was as though she were recovering from a long, exhausting illness. Striding along beside Ba and Ritva in her grass-lined Saami boots, she was filled with a nervous energy that lightened her steps and made her heart beat faster. She felt, now, that she could face whatever hardships lay ahead.

They spoke little as they travelled, but from time to time, in a burst of high spirits, Ritva would start to sing in a husky, tuneless voice. Most of her songs were rude soldiers’ ditties that made Gerda blush and cover her ears; but sometimes, in a meditative mood, she sang snatches of old rune songs, or hummed and improvised her way through a Saami joik.

Thus Gerda learned of Stalo the Giant and his wife Lutakis the Treacherous; and of the Ulda who lived at the bottoms of lakes and rode on sleds drawn by white reindeer a-jingle with a thousand silver bells. Or sometimes the words were Ritva’s own invention: “Who is the hero who will journey behind the Cave of the North Wind?” she would chant exuberantly, keeping time to her loping stride. “Who is the hero who will break the spell of the Terrible Enchantress?”

There were whortleberries and lingonberries in the bogs, and the bilberry bushes were heavy with fruit. In the pine forests, in the shade of rotting stumps, huge pale mushrooms sprang up like ghosts. They fished for perch and pike in the streams and ate them with bilberries stewed into a sauce, and they boiled strong, bitter coffee over their small fire.

Beyond the birchwoods and the pine forest lay high bare tundra, rolling endlessly before them like a moss-green meadow. One early evening they came to a lake set into a deep bowl of white-peaked mountains. The near side of the lake was lit by a faint blue glow, while the farther shore was washed in vivid rose-coloured light. A solitary turf-covered, dome-shaped dwelling, a goattieh, stood at the edge of the forest facing the lake. It looked like a small grassy hill with a thread of white smoke curling out of the top.

“We’d better let them know they have guests,” said Ritva, as they drew near. She called loudly through the doorway of the goattieh, “Is anyone there?”

“Only me, and the mice,” said a good-humoured voice.

They ducked in through the narrow entranceway, stepping around a stack of firewood. Every inch of the floor was carpeted with birch branches, except for the hearth in the centre of the room. There, an old woman sat surrounded by pots and pans and cauldrons. She was stirring something in a blackened kettle that hung on a long sooty chain suspended from a roof beam. Further along the beam were rows of dried cod and half-dried laundry. The smell in the goattieh was a rich mixture of smoke, boiled coffee, reindeer hides and fish.

Bright black eyes peered at them from a leathery, high-cheekboned face.

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