The fact was that Margret Asgeirsdottir had indeed served Sira Jon at his meat, but that in looking for the tall blond girl claimed ten years before by Olaf Finnbogason, he had overlooked a certain old woman, as he thought she was, although she was but of an age with himself. If, however, he had not rushed away, but stayed the night with Osmund, he would have known her from her dreams, for every night she awoke either weeping or calling out, and it was said that Skuli Gudmundsson prevented her from sleeping out of malice, for it is the case that even ghosts who were formerly gentle and considerate folk become ferocious and hateful after death. Nevertheless, although talk of this went about, Skuli neither appeared to nor harmed anyone other than Margret Asgeirsdottir, and so no one cared to do anything about it, for it was said, a man could draw the anger of ghosts upon himself by meddling. In addition to this, Margret never spoke of her dreams nor identified her tormentor, and so no one felt called upon to bring the topic up, not even Sira Isleif.
Now it happened that some days after Sira Jon’s visit, around the mass of St. Hallvard, Margret and Asta returned to Steinstraumstead with a flock of twenty sheep and ewes and began putting things in order there. Where Margret seemed to have grown smaller, Asta Thorbergsdottir seemed to have grown larger, and her strength, always that of a man, now seemed equal to that of two men. Cutting turves and piling them up was as nothing to her, and she hardly grunted when lifting the heaviest stones. Her arms were so long and so strong that she could carry two struggling sheep with no trouble, and her hips were wide as the beam of a boat. It was her habit always to ask Margret Asgeirsdottir for advice and instructions, and always to look to her if someone else, even Marta Thordardottir, asked her to perform any service. On the day when they rowed across Eriks Fjord to Steinstraumstead, they found upon the shore a deserted arrangement of stones, such as skraelings build when they desire to cook, and Asta went over to these stones, and kicked them apart with her foot, and found another large boulder and lifted it and set it among these stones, but the two women said nothing of this, but only went about sweeping out the steading and moving into it.
Some days after their coming, they looked out in the morning and discovered three skin boats pulled up on the shore and another two out in the fjord. There were some twelve or fifteen skraeling men and boys on the shore and in the boats, but after a short while, they pushed the beached boats back into the water and paddled swiftly away. Margret was not a little afraid of these signs, for in addition to the news of Ragnvald Einarsson, she knew well from the stories of her childhood the sorts of indignities skraelings were prepared to perpetrate upon the children of men, especially the female children, and she did not hesitate to relate them to Asta.
It was true, she said, that they took particular pleasure in preventing the worship of the Lord among their captives, and often cast spells upon these unfortunates so that they forgot all of their prayers. It was also said by some, including her old nurse, Ingrid, that the feet of these demons were covered with fur, as was their skin inside their clothing, and this was the reason they could endure such cold as they did. Only their hands and faces were hairless, but these didn’t freeze, either, for some reason, and even in the bitterest cold the demons went without hoods or mittens. Asta looked fixedly at the fjord where the skin boats had turned into specks in the distance. She made no response, but went down the hillside and kicked the cooking stones even farther apart. After this, they saw nothing of the skraelings for a long while.
It happened that one day around the feast of St. Jon, Margret and Asta set about shearing the twenty ewes that they had brought with them to Steinstraumstead. Asta was good at this work, but Margret was clumsy, for Hrafn and Olaf did the shearing at Gunnars Stead, and so it was Margret’s task to take the fleeces and lay them across the side of the hill, to cool and loosen so that they could be broken into wool for spinning. These fleeces were laid out for the space of one day, then rolled up at nightfall and put away. With the bleating of the ewes and the crying of the lambs, there was such a clamor that neither Asta nor Margret, who was farther down the hillside, noticed the approach of two skin boats until they were drawn up on the shore and the skraelings in them had already gotten out and begun to cook their meal over a fire they built. This group of demons included three men, a young woman, an old woman, and two children, and these children came up the hillside and surprised Margret at her work so that she cried out. Now the young woman appeared behind them and took their hands and backed away. Unlike the children of men, these children stared into Margret’s face as a cat might, never needing to blink or turn away. The demon woman smiled and nodded.
Now Asta came down the hillside carrying the sheep shears and two of the demon men came up from the shore, one of them carrying a bow and some arrows. This man appeared to be younger even than the young woman, perhaps eighteen or nineteen winters old. He stopped as if startled by the sight of Asta Thorbergsdottir, and let his gaze wander over her. Seeing this, Asta raised her shears above her head and brandished them, and the skraelings and their young turned and went down the hillside. But the young man looked back twice at Asta, although she scowled mightily at him. Now a sheep scampered down the slope, and Margret and Asta saw that the three unshorn ewes had escaped from the ewe fold and scattered themselves among the shorn ewes, and that the fleeces were in danger of being stepped on and broken, so they began to run about the slope chasing the sheep back to the fold. They thought no more of the skraeling group until the next morning, when Asta stepped out of the steading and discovered a fine sealskin upon the doorstone that could only have come from the skraelings. This she carried down to the strand and pitched into the fjord. After that, she went to the cooking spot and scattered the stones once again.
Now it was usual during the summer days that Margret would take the sheep back into the hills behind Steinstraumstead that overlooked the stony creek known as Steinstraum, and were well watered by the glacier, so that they were green all summer, and she would herd them out each morning and back each evening, and also gather angelica and other herbs such as she found and put them in her sack. It was true that in spite of the fact that Margret had lost her girlish appearance, she was still little burdened by pain of the hips or any of the other ills of maturity, and she stepped about the hills with as much speed and grace as she always had. It was also true that such movement was a pleasure to her in all weathers, for the sunlight and the breezes and the rain drove away thoughts of past things. This had been a great trial to her, that the cloth she had fashioned for Marta Thordardottir had been all woven of memories and regrets, so that when Marta brought it out to admire it, the very smell of it brought Margret grief, and she foresaw that this would be the case again in the coming winter and every succeeding one, that her memories, all alike but eternally repeating themselves, would cluster about her as she sat quietly at the loom and bear down upon her and smother her. And yet, Marta was herself growing old and her sight was dimming, so that if she wished to have Margret about her, Margret desired to fulfill her wish.
Going with the sheep, however, was so like her childhood wanderings in the mountains above Gunnars Stead that it seemed to her that she was returned to that time, and the ghostly figure she sometimes caught sight of just ahead of her or half hidden among the scrub birch was only her father’s brother, Hauk Gunnarsson, setting bird snares. And this figure was so quiet and elusive, as Hauk himself had been, that its appearance hardly even surprised her. It was true, she sometimes said to Asta, that her father’s brother had visited every part of the eastern settlement, and must have known Steinstraumstead and the stony river as well as anywhere else. At the end of each day with the sheep, Margret returned to the steading to receive her dreams, and as night fell, grew melancholy, so that she did not welcome talk with Asta, and Asta did not offer it.
Perhaps as a result of these habits, Margret came and went without knowing that Asta was much oppressed by the attentions of the young skraeling man. He came every day alone in a fine ski
n boat, and at first he was content to demonstrate his skills to Asta, she thought for her admiration. He was agile in the skin boat, and capable of great speed and almost magical maneuvers. Of course, she dared not look at them at first, but kept to her work of cheese-making, spinning, and repair of the turf and stonework about the little steading, but in the end it was difficult never to look, for his feats were such as she had never seen before performed by men. And as the devil tempts folk little by little out of the path of the Lord, so these sights tempted Asta Thorbergsdottir first to glance and then to stare and then to come down upon the strand and gaze out into the fjord, where demon and boat together acted like playful fish, leaping in and out of the water, disappearing and reappearing in the waves, shooting from one place to another. At least, so these things appeared to the sight of Asta Thorbergsdottir, but she would not have admitted them to others, for fear of being thought possessed. But even so, when the skraeling approached the shore, Asta had the sense to run up the hillside, and in addition to this, to cast away every gift that the devil left for her, no matter how desirable some little trinket might be, for the fact was that the beauty of such things hid their corrupt nature—were someone to cut open a hunk of whalemeat, for example, such a hunk left as a gift by a demon, one would find it crawling with maggots, and what was more, even gifts not naturally prone to such transformations, a bone needle or a piece of walrus tusk, were transformed by the skraelings into crawling and corrupt objects.
After some days of this, she was willing to admit that the way this corruption came about was not intended by the skraelings themselves, but came as a result of their demon natures. Even so, she resolutely threw everything away and brandished whatever might be in her hand when the skraeling appeared in as threatening a fashion as she could muster. Also, on some days she looked for Sira Isleif to come and relieve her fears, or at least stiffen her resistance against this skraeling, for, say what one wished, she had come to look for his gifts and his antics in the fjord. Life at Steinstraumstead, especially after the winter at Brattahlid, was a solitary undertaking. Other days she feared that Sira Isleif’s visit might be upon them, and that he would castigate her sin in paying any notice to this devil at all, and she turned over in her thoughts what she might say in her own defense, but the fact was, that for deserting the ways of God, even in thoughts, there is no defense. And so she wished away the visit of Sira Isleif on these days.
Margret and Asta were in the habit of arising with the sun to milk the ewes, then eating a bit of dried sealmeat together before Margret drove the animals to their pasture, and on one such morning it came to Asta that she should speak of her distress to the other woman, for she had come far from the days of kicking apart the skraelings’ stone cooking spot, and although she had seen the young woman and the two children only that once, she remembered their faces clearly, but not with the fear or hatred that she remembered feeling at the time. At morning meat she held in her hand a little trinket, a man carved in the skraeling fashion from a bit of ivory, with a few incised lines to depict his parka and his fur boots and his eye slits. This trinket she had been unable to make herself cast away, and yet it weighed heavily upon her soul. In addition to this, she knew that the skraeling was hiding in wait for Margret’s departure, as he had for each of the last few mornings, and that he would appear, smiling, as soon as the little flock disappeared over the brow of the hill. Were she to put the charm upon the tiny table she had made for them, Margret, she knew, would lift her eyes from it to Asta’s own face, and she would be preserved, and yet she kept it tight and warm in the palm of her hand.
For her part, Margret Asgeirsdottir was still in the grip of her dreams, as she was every morning, and looked upon the face of Asta Thorbergsdottir with the same sense of distance as she always did. She longed to be off.
Now it happened that shortly after Margret went away, Asta stepped out of the steading with the intention of going to the privy, and the skraeling leapt out from behind the corner of the house and grabbed Asta by the arm. Then he took her wrist and squeezed it, so that her hand opened and disclosed the ivory figure. At once the skraeling gave a great shout and began to grin in a diabolical fashion, and then, greatly to Asta’s surprise, he grabbed her hair at the nape of her neck and began jerking her about him, attempting to throw her down upon the ground. With his other hand, he slapped her bottom, not hard, but like Thorkel Gellison slapping the flanks of a favorite mare. Asta readily saw that she was a good deal taller than the demon, and probably heavier as well, though like all skraelings, he was clothed in furs summer and winter. Now she turned toward him and grabbed him around the chest as folk do in wrestling contests, and squeezed him as hard as she could, all the while listening with her head jerked back by his hand gripping her hair for the crack of his ribs. This never came, but she did manage to drive the wind out of him and overpower him so that he fell to his knees and his face grew red and swollen. She, in turn, was nearly overpowered by the rank odor of seal blubber on his hands and face, but she pushed him away and turned and ran up the hillside. Sometime later, she looked out and saw that his skin boat was gone, and this was a good example indeed of the wages of walking with the devil, for some of her hair had come out in a large patch and the back of her head throbbed painfully. In the evening, she spoke of this misadventure to Margret, and wept mightily in remorse at her weakness. But when they awakened on the second day, it was to discover not just the one skraeling, but a whole group of them standing about outside the steading, all men.
Margret stood inside the doorway and Asta behind her with a weighty soapstone lamp concealed in each of her hands. One of the men, who had graying hair and a little beard upon his chin, stepped forward and addressed Margret as follows, “Old woman, where are your men?” His Norse tongue was almost unintelligible, and Margret stepped forward two paces so that she could make it out. The men stepped back.
She said, “We have no men here.” Now Asta stepped in front of her and lifted the pieces of stone above her head as if to throw them. The group of men conferred among themselves, and the leader spoke once again. He said, “It is a shame to all men when they have to do business with women.”
Margret shrugged and turned to go inside the house.
“Even so,” he went on, “a certain young man finds his heart set upon this young woman here, for she is a fine fat girl, and he can hardly keep his eyes off her, and so he wishes to take her for his first wife.”
“I think,” said Margret, “that I don’t understand your words.” And indeed, much of what he had said had escaped her, but it appeared that he was asking to have Asta Thorbergsdottir marry the young skraeling who had pulled her hair out.
The demon spoke more slowly, gesturing at the young skraeling, who stepped forward. “This fellow, Quimiak, wishes to have your girl for his wife.”
Margret and Asta looked at each other.
“He is a good hunter and a prosperous man. Soon he will have another wife to help her, and her life will be an easy one, although it is true that he is young to marry.”
Margret turned to Asta and said, “I think he is marrying someone else, too.”
“This courtship has gone on for many days, and Quimiak is most anxious to bring it to a conclusion.”
Now Margret spoke loudly to the older skraeling. “My friend and I must consult together about this.” She waved her hand toward the bottom of the slope, and the leader said a few words. Soon the skraelings were out of sight of the house, although the breeze carried sounds of their talking to the two women. Margret and Asta sat down upon a stone that lay against the south wall of the steading, and a little time passed before they began to converse. At last Margret said, “It seems to me that things have passed that I have known nothing of.”
Now Asta smiled and said, “And it seems to me that things have passed that I have known nothing of, as well.” And they sat silently for another short time.
Margret said, “This is the smallest of steadings, and will never
support both of us in both summer and winter, and in addition to that, Marta Thordardottir is growing old, and I doubt that Isleif or Ragnleif will greet us with such pleasure as Marta does every autumn.”
“And though it may not be able to support two, yet one would not be able to live in such a lonely spot.”
“That may be or may not be.”
“No one knows how the skraelings live. And this one smelled like an old sealskin that hasn’t been cleaned properly, and yet—” But she fell silent.
“And yet?”
“And yet, like as not one such as I will get few enough offers from others.”
“But skraelings aren’t men. They are demons, and do the work of Satan.”
“Many men marry skraeling women and father children. Their wives’ mothers come to live with them on their steadings.”
“And all are baptized, and they live as Norsemen, and change their names, and worship in church as others do.”
“I was greatly fond of Jonas Skulason, that is a fact.”
“My father’s brother, Hauk Gunnarsson, used to go to the Northsetur as a young man, and he had much to do with skraelings, and he used to say that these folk, for he considered them folk and not demons, were used to traveling great distances in the darkest part of winter, and in fact in the places where they go, the sun never shines after the winter nights.”
“Why is it that they make these journeys?”
“They have no sheep, and spend all of their time hunting walrus and whale and seal and bears.”
“It may be that they are never hungry.”
“It may be. My father’s brother was not a little impressed with their skills.”