Winterfrost (10 page)

Their next stops brought more opportunities to help the nisse’s forest friends. A trip to a mother rabbit’s warren meant another leap into underground darkness, but this one ended in a much softer landing of rabbit fur. Gammel left piles of winter greens for the nursing mother, who was afraid to leave her brood to search for nourishment for herself. “First-timer,” Gammel whispered to Bettina as they left. “She’ll relax in a month or so, when she has her next litter.”

At the entrance to a hollow tree, Gammel asked for Bettina’s assistance emptying his bag of acorns, hazelnuts, and chestnuts. Bettina reached deep into the bag, passing each nut to Gammel, who stacked them neatly inside the tree until it could hold no more.

“Silly squirrels,” he said, chuckling. “They hoard away nuts and such for the long winters only to forget where they’ve placed them. I like to help them out now and then.”

Gammel closed his satchel and hoisted it back up onto one shoulder.

“Now where?” Bettina asked, fascinated by the journey. She’d lived next to this forest her entire life, but what she’d learned about its inhabitants in the past hour was far more than she’d ever imagined.

Gammel’s frosty gray beard and mustache parted in a long, silent yawn. Of course. With every passing minute, more daylight seeped through the treetops, reminding Bettina that it was the end of a long day for Gammel. He was ready to return home and retire to his alcove.

“Home for both of us,” Gammel replied. “Me to mine, you to yours.”

The thought of returning to her empty house without Pia made Bettina’s heart sink.

“What will I do there?”

“You will wait. You must trust me, Bettina Larsen. Do you trust me?”

Bettina nodded. She wanted to tell him that at this point she trusted him — and Pernilla and Hagen and even Klakke — more than just about anyone. But the knot in her throat told her not to trust her voice. She was certain if she tried to talk, she’d burst into tears.

Instead, she nodded. At least Gammel hadn’t asked her to make any promises. She knew he believed she would go home and wait, but how could she? She’d go home, feed the animals, replenish her food supply, and then head out on her own to find Pia. As they parted ways, guilt tugged at Bettina’s stomach, but even the guilt wouldn’t keep her from looking for her sister.

Gammel watched the human girl wend her way through the woods toward home. By the time she was out of sight, she would be returned to her normal size once again.

It was true that Gammel hadn’t asked Bettina to promise to stay home and wait. How could he? A nisse, after all, would never ask someone to make a promise he knew she’d never keep.

Klakke had been on his best behavior since baby Pia had disappeared from beneath the big oak tree. He knew it was all his fault. He also knew that while he only took Pia out of impulsive curiosity, the one who took her from him likely did so for other reasons. His name was Ulf, and his character was known throughout the nisse world. That Pia was likely in Ulf’s hands worried Klakke from the inside out.

Though young and often foolish, Klakke knew better than to try to intervene in baby Pia’s rescue. The situation was for Gammel to solve, and Klakke would do best to just take care of the Larsens’ farm. That was, after all, his responsibility and his alone. It was the reason he had come to Lolland in the first place. So, Klakke had returned to the Larsens’ barn in the evening, just in time to feed the animals. The horses were unusually spookish, so Klakke sang every verse of “Jeg bœrer med Smil min Byrde”
—
“I Carry My Burden with a Smile” — as he went about his work. It seemed to calm Hans and Henrietta, and even the goats stopped their constant fussing to listen as well.

When Klakke fed the cats, the tiger mother dodged him twice, but she eventually came alongside and allowed Klakke to run his small hands across her back. When he got closer to her tail, though, she skirted sideways. Just in case.

But Klakke wasn’t there to tease. He fed all the animals and carried fresh water buckets much larger than himself. With little effort at all, he hoisted the heavy buckets over his head. Keeping them steady was by far the harder task.

Klakke’s guilt subsided one chore at a time. Working hard always made him feel better.

“There you be, my pets,” he told the horses after he’d climbed the edge of the stall. He stood atop the wooden gate, looking eye to eye with Hans and Henrietta. The horses were used to his presence, and they continued to noisily chomp their grain while he spoke.

“Seems I’ve upset the way of living here at the Larsen place,” he admitted. “But don’t you worry, my friends. ’Cause Old Gammel’s going to fix everything right back to the way it was. And he’s going to do it real quick. Before the mister and missus come home.”

Hans and Henrietta bobbed their heads as if to communicate their understanding. It was enough to satisfy Klakke. He hopped nimbly from the stall wall to the barn floor below.

By the time he finished all the barn chores, the sun was ready to creep up over the barren sugar beet fields. And when it did, Klakke knew he’d best be out of sight. On a normal day, he would have climbed the ladder to the hayloft and slept the day away in hidden comfort. But this was not a normal day, and Klakke was feeling an added responsibility to the Larsens. Especially to young Bettina.

Klakke slipped through the barn door, opened just a crack, and hurried to the wood room. There he restarted the fire that had gone out; Bettina shouldn’t come home to a cold house. It would be bad enough, he thought, that she must come back to a house that was empty and quiet. With a fire roaring inside the stove, Klakke was sure the house would be warm before Bettina returned. He was sure Gammel wouldn’t have sent her anywhere else but home. Morning light had not yet broken the horizon, so Klakke sneaked into the kitchen and flipped on a light over the sink. He smiled as the soft yellow glow washed over the room.

Back in the barn, Klakke settled himself into the warm golden straw in the loft. He was tired, and sleep came quickly. But it didn’t last long.

Klakke awoke to the sound of Felix’s deep barking.
Vo-vo-vo.
Then a moment of silence. Then
vo-vo-vo-vo-vo-vo.
Someone must be outside.

Klakke ran to the front of the hayloft and pushed open the window the tiniest bit. Felix was darting in circles around the barnyard, his tail wagging furiously. Klakke’s gaze turned toward the road and saw unmistakably that the neighbors were making their way toward the Larsens’ house. He drew in his breath and closed the door. He was sure Bettina would be home by now. There was nothing he could do to help. Bettina must handle this one on her own.

Bettina expected the house would be cold and dark, but when she emerged from the forest at daybreak, she noticed three things: a small light glowed from the kitchen window, smoke curled from the wood-room chimney, and everything around her was normal size again. Gradually, during her walk back from making rounds with Gammel, she had grown tall again.

No longer being tiny came as a relief. It was the first two observations that worried her. With a light on and the fire going, it sure looked like someone was home.

Surely Mor or Far couldn’t have returned so soon. Or could they have? Had her sense of time been altered while she was nisse size? She took off running toward the door.

Inside the wood room, she saw that the fire had been stoked recently. The firebox was full, and warmth filled the adjacent kitchen. Bettina removed her winter coat and snow-covered boots, remembering how tiny they had been when she was nisse size. To her amazement, the white thistledown socks had grown right along with her, and they remained warm and snug on her feet. But despite that bit of evidence, Bettina’s recollection of the night in the house under the tree was becoming fuzzy, more like a dream than reality.

“Hello?” Bettina called as she stepped inside the house. She turned off the light above the sink. There was enough daylight now, even though it was turning out to be another cold, cloudy winterfrost morning just like the one before. This string of identical days only added to her inability to keep track of what day it was.

“Anyone home?” she asked, her heart pounding. Then just to be cautious, she added, “I’m back from my walk in the woods!”

There was no response, and Bettina knew she was alone. The clock on the kitchen wall read 7:47, but she ran to look at the one on the fireplace in the living room. When the second clock confirmed the time, Bettina sighed. She found comfort in knowing that she was back to a place where time was measured and meant something. She put a kettle of water on the stove for tea and then sat down at the kitchen table to gather her thoughts and make a plan.

Outside, Felix let out a loud bark. Then another. She dashed to the window above the kitchen sink and moved the curtain aside. Oh no!

Rasmus and Lisa Pedersen were walking down the road toward the Larsens’ house.

Bettina scrambled from the kitchen. She took the stairs two at a time and quickly changed into clean clothes. At the bottom of the steps, she tossed the clothes she’d been wearing into the laundry room just as she heard the familiar
ting-a-ling
of the bell inside the wood-room door.

Mr. and Mrs. Pedersen were standing in the wood room when Bettina opened the kitchen door. Their smiling faces covered up a long night of worry.

“Good morning, Bettina!” Mrs. Pedersen greeted Bettina with a hug.

“Hi!” Bettina returned brightly. She stood in the doorway, not offering to let the Pedersens in. Mor would be aghast at her rudeness had she been there to witness it, but Bettina could hardly risk their poking around and asking after Pia.

“Lisa and I are just checking in on you girls,” Mr. Pedersen told her. “Wanted to be sure all is well with your folks away.”

“Oh, thank you so much. Yes, we are fine. We’re doing great!” Bettina tried to sound convincing.

“I’m glad to hear that.” Mr. Pedersen sighed. “We, uh, we were here yesterday. And we couldn’t find anyone.”

Bettina took a deep breath. She didn’t like to lie, but she saw no other way out.

“Yesterday? Oh, we went sledding all day! You know, this winterfrost is so beautiful, we simply had to be out in it,” she explained.

“Oh, I agree with that! I spent a good deal of time outdoors myself yesterday. Walked through the forest, and it was breathtaking out there,” Mr. Pedersen said.

He didn’t mention that he’d called her name just before she entered Gammel’s house. Bettina sighed with relief. Perhaps that would be her last lie.

Mrs. Pedersen was a petite woman, younger than Mor, with no children of her own yet. But she adored baby Pia. Mrs. Pedersen tried to see past Bettina.

“Where is the baby?” she asked.

“Pia?” Bettina tried not to stammer. “Pia’s sleeping right now.”

Mrs. Pedersen frowned. “Still sleeping? It’s nearly eight o’clock. Are you sure she’s all right, Bettina?”

“Oh, no,” Bettina explained. “I mean yes, she’s all right. But no, she’s not
still
sleeping. She’s napping. Again. That little girl was up at five in the morning, all bright-eyed and ready to play. So, we got up very early, had our breakfast, fed the animals, and she’s back to napping now. She’s sleeping cozy in her —”

Bettina stopped midsentence. She knew the pram where Pia usually napped was right behind her in the kitchen, next to the patio doors where she’d left it after she’d discovered it empty.

“. . . bed,” Bettina finished quickly.

“Oh, that’s too bad.” Lisa Pedersen sighed. “I was hoping to hold her awhile. Is she walking yet?”

“Almost.” Bettina smiled, ever the proud sister. “I planned to teach her to walk before Mormor gets here, but . . .”

Now it was Bettina’s turn to sigh.
But I can’t teach her to walk if I don’t know where she is
, she thought.

“. . . but she has a mind of her own, I’ll tell you,” she said instead. “She’ll walk when she’s good and ready!”

The Pedersens laughed along with Bettina at Pia’s stubborn streak.

Then there was a moment of awkward silence. A long moment in which Bettina wasn’t sure what to say next and the Pedersens seemed reluctant to end their brief visit.