The child might not be dead.
Just last week she'd perched on the greasy stool, stroked Skjalda's warm udder, and told the cow about Lena, the story that Ragnar didn't want to hear. The cow had turned to look at her with round brown eyes, extending her rough purple tongue toward Charlotte's cheek.
Mornings when Ragnar heard the chickens cackle, he placed his feet on the cold floor. No other world existed. A courageous man, he would walk into a blinding storm to find his sheep or climb the mountain path while the gravel rolled downhill under his horse's feet. He often rode along the glacier rim, where a misstep meant certain death on jagged rocks in a crevice.
But he feared Charlotte's past.
Talking was also not his strength. When she first arrived at the farm, he'd scattered words at her, and she'd pecked at them. Later, she'd learned to enjoy his stroking at night, his murmuring about new milk filters and fence posts.
Back then she hardly understood him. Picking her way among the tussocks behind a cow's swinging udder, she'd moved her lips searching for phrases. Ragnar had named things and made her repeat the words. But once he'd established her basic farm vocabulary, he'd gone quiet. Back then, it hadn't mattered so much. She'd been moving forwards into a new life. That was before she realized how time looped back on you and knocked you down with things you'd rather forget.
Charlotte had been without a man for a long time that summer when she met Ragnar. Their solemn promises in the shadow of the minister's ruff gave them rights to one another. And during that fall and winter their bodies slid together hungrily at night. The nighttime heat left a residual warmth that drew them to one another during the day. Furtively, she stroked his arm, his thigh when the old woman, his mother, wasn't nearby.
But soon the touching wasn't enough. The novelty of his quick couplings wore off. The less they talked, the more uncomfortable she felt as her memories backed up inside her. One night, the silence between them felt heavier than his long leg lying across hers.
"I want to tell you—" she started.
He pulled back his leg.
"About Berlin—"
"Don't like big cities."
"During the war, a lot of people—"
He placed his finger on her lips, shushing a noisy child. Afraid to upset him, she kept quiet, focused on breathing in a calm, even manner.
At last he spoke.
"We need a new outhouse."
"Of course, but—"
She placed her hand on his chest, felt it rumble under her palm, knew he was preparing to speak again. He rose up on his elbow.
"A husband needs his wife in the fields, not just at night," he said, then rolled onto his back, apparently exhausted by his own rhetoric.
She welcomed the pledge of friendship. Its restrictions dawned on her later.
The night Ragnar imposed the talking ban, her memories formed a knot inside her. What she'd lived long ago felt like a creature—perhaps a dragon—that slumbered uneasily within her. A light sleeper, the dragon sometimes woke up suddenly. On those nights, Ragnar found her shivering outdoors, talking through blue lips. Why? He asked. She didn't know why.
She and Max had been so sensual together. Her fingertips,
the sides of her feet, the backs of her knees—every part of her—had desired him. They'd lingered over one another, languidly naming things—colors, painters, landscapes, sunsets. She had relished the slow build-up of desire, the sudden explosion of pleasure.
Ragnar never wasted time. In the village, he bought his grain quickly. In bed, he was efficient. Slower, she'd pleaded with him those first nights in bed, placing her hand on his, guiding his stroking of her. His face in the midsummer light had been contorted with embarrassment. Later, he'd spoken.
"She—"
He rarely mentioned his first wife, a woman who had grown up on the hillside. His mother had given her consumptive daughter-in-law lichen milk three times a day to clear her lungs, and still she'd died. He'd made a bad choice.
During the day, Ragnar helped Charlotte with such words as dog—hundur. Sheep—kind. Phrases like pass the fat—réttu mér flotið. He never labeled what you couldn't see and knew little of what she saw. He especially disliked the Berlin ghost who crept under her blanket while he slept.
Sometimes when the cold air from the outside wall touched every vertebra in her back, he appeared and warmed her. But after he was gone, questions arose. How many flour bag aprons, strung together through the years like paper dolls holding hands, would she wear out in this place?
Her union with Ragnar had grown from need, not love. Too many women had left the hillside, he'd explained—gone to work as maids in Reykjavík. For money. For running water. Germany had women. He'd advertised. And she'd been a woman without a man. Funny. She'd always thought of herself as an artist, one who could live without a man.
As the truck ascended the hillside, she stared straight ahead, determined to match his silence.
A Gift
The boys stood on the steps waving, reclaiming their parents at last. Eleven-year old Tryggvi, named for Ragnar's father, strode toward the car on long, lean legs. His unwashed brown hair stood up stiff as a crow's feather. Henrik, five years old, ran down the steps towards her. Trails of earlier tears marked his cheeks. Pale-skinned and small-boned, he looked as if the cool summer breeze would break him in two.
When the midwife—a heavy-hipped woman from the foot of the hillside—had laid the squalling infant on Charlotte's chest, her father's name, Heinrich, had come into her head. But even as she rolled her shoulders in pain under the baby's hard gums on her nipple, she'd changed his name to Henrik. It would sound better on the hillside. Being the son of the foreign woman would be hard enough for the child.
Henrik's eyes held an accusation.
"Why didn't you tell me you were going?"
She stepped out of the car and caressed his fragile shoulders. Every time she went on an errand, he behaved as if she'd left him forever. Secretly she liked his fear of losing her. It tied her to the farm in a way that Ragnar never could. It matched her own fear for the safety of these pups born to her in middle age. Tryggvi bristled under her caution, but Henrik absorbed her fears, made them his own.
Now he hung on her leg.
"Silly," she said, tweaking his nose.
She must discourage this nervous hugging, help him grow up. Three years old the day they found her on the shore, he'd seen the waves washing over her. After that, she'd promised them. No more climbing on the rocks. Just a little whispering into the waves.
"We'll make pancakes," she said.
Henrik released her and ran into the house.
Tryggvi's features curled into indifference. She wanted to kiss him, but he wouldn't allow that, not since he'd begun to swing a scythe with his father. He rolled up his sleeves, reached into the back seat, and pulled out the bag of grain. Watching him struggle with it across the driveway, she felt a rush of pride.
Before entering the house, she glanced towards the sea. It was her favorite time, that moment of indecision in the ocean when the tide turned.
The old woman sat in the living room, knitting. Above her hung the three oil paintings Charlotte had brought with her. An old man looked tenderly into the eyes of his young son. The boy returned the gaze. The old man held a metallic glint in his hand, indistinguishable as a knife unless you knew how Abraham had hesitated to kill Isaac.
Before their first Christmas together, Charlotte