The Ice Palace (4 page)

‘Yes, Mother.’

It did, too. She took a long time over it. She knew she could not avoid being questioned. She came back again and found herself a chair, not daring to dive into her own bedroom. So there would be even more prying. She might as well face it.

Mother said, ‘That’s much better.’

Siss waited.

Mother said, ‘What was it like at Unn’s then, Siss? Was it fun?’

‘It was nice!’ said Siss sharply.

‘Doesn’t sound much like it,’ said Father, smiling at her.

Mother looked up, too. ‘What’s the matter this evening?’

Siss looked at them. They were being as kind as they knew how, she supposed, but -

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘But you do pry so. Pry about everything.’

‘Oh, come, Siss.’

‘Go in and get something to eat. It’s standing on the kitchen table.’

‘I’ve had something to eat.’

She had not, but serve them right.

‘Very well, you’d better go to bed then. You look worn out. And I expect it’ll be all right in the morning. Good night, Siss.’

‘Good night.’

She went at once. They understood nothing. Once in bed she realized how tired she was. She had strange, upsetting things to think about, but the warmth after the cold stole up on her, and she did not think for long.

‘Up you get, Unn!’

Auntie’s usual call, today as on any other ordinary school day.

But for Unn it was no ordinary day. It was the morning after the meeting with Siss.

‘Up you get, Unn!’ though there was no hurry to get to school. But Auntie was like that. She never let you wait till the last minute.

Unn heard the usual thunderclap from the steel-hard ice out there in the darkness when she put her head out. It was like a signal that the new day had begun. But inside her room during the night she had heard a dull thud, too, telling her, before she finally fell asleep, that now it was the very middle of the night. It had taken her a long time to get to sleep after the evening with Siss, thinking about everything that might
happen,
together with Siss.

It was colder than ever outside, said Auntie, who was getting the breakfast. Unn looked at the hard, glittering stars above the house. You could barely see that the eastern sky was growing paler: a stark, wintry pre-Christmas dawn. As the darkness thinned, trees appeared, white with rime. Unn watched them as she got ready for school.

For school and for Siss.

And she would not think about
the other
today!

At once it struck her how impossible it was to meet Siss again only a few hours after the awkward way in which they had parted. She had scared Siss so that Siss had run away. It
was no use meeting her straight away! It was no use going to school today.

She looked out at the forest of rime-white trees in the brightening dawn. She would have to hide somewhere, get away, not meet Siss today.

Tomorrow it would be different but not just
now.
She could not look into Siss’s eyes today. She thought no further; the idea took hold of her with compelling force.

Siss, whom she was dying to meet, and yet -

In any case she would have to leave as she did every day. It was no use sitting down and saying that she didn’t want to go to school. Auntie would never accept that. It was too late to say she was ill, too – besides, she was not in the habit of making excuses. She looked at herself quickly in the mirror. She did not look the least bit ill; it was no use telling fibs. She would leave for school as usual and then make off before she met anyone. Make off and hide until school was over.

Even though Auntie had called and woken her, she said, when Unn was ready with her satchel, ‘Are you going so early?’

‘Is it any earlier than usual?’

‘I think so.’

‘I want to meet Siss.’ She felt a twinge as she said it.

‘Oh, of course. Are you in such a hurry?’

‘Mm.’

‘Then it’s no use my saying anything, I can see. Off you go. It’s a blessing your coat’s thick. It’s bitterly cold. Put on two pairs of mitts, too.’

Her words seemed like fences alongside the road to school; it was difficult to climb over them, and they led straight to school. But not today! Not after Siss had run away from her last night.

‘What is it, Unn?’

Unn jerked herself back. ‘Can’t find my mitts.’

‘Here. Right under your nose.’

She left the house in the fading darkness. She had to find out how to keep away today as soon as she was out of sight.

No, she had only one thought today: Siss.

This is the way to her. This is the way to Siss.

Can’t meet her, only think about her.

Mustn’t think about the other now,
only about Siss whom I have found.

Siss and I in the mirror.

Gleams and radiance.

Only think about Siss.

With every step.

Now she was at the first rime-white tree that would hide her. There she left the road. She would have to keep hidden until she could come home again at the usual time without being questioned.

But what was she to do with herself? A whole long school day. And in such cold. The air she inhaled seemed to be trying to stop her breathing, to constrict it. It bit into her cheeks. But her warm coat, and being used to the cold this autumn, prevented her from feeling really chilled.

Boom! went the thunder in the black, shining steel on the frozen lake.

That was it! That was the solution. She knew at once what she would do. She would go to see the ice.

All by herself.

Then she would have plenty to do all day and could keep warm and everything.

The trip to see the ice had been discussed at school during the past few days. Unn had not taken part in it but had heard enough to know what it was all about and that they would have to go very soon, for the snow might come any day now.

There was a waterfall some distance away that had built up an extraordinary mountain of ice around it during this long, hard period of cold. It was said to look like a palace, and nobody could remember it happening before. This palace was the purpose of the outing. First along the lake to the outlet, and then down the river to the waterfall. A short winter’s day like this was just right for it.

Splendid, her day would be filled.

But I was going to see it with Siss!

She chased the thought away by thinking warmly and happily: I shall see it for the
second
time with Siss. That will be even better.

The ice on the lake shone so brightly that it did not look like ice at all. Steel-ice. Not a snowflake had fallen into the water when it froze, and not a snowflake had fallen since.

Now the ice was thick and safe. It thundered and cracked and hardened. Unn was running towards it. It seemed natural to run because of the cold. Besides, she was running in order to get quickly away from the part where people might be – since she was going to hide all day.

She had managed it. The urgent call – ‘Unn, come here!’ in Auntie’s kind voice – did not come. Auntie thought she was at school now.

But what would they make of it at school? She hadn’t thought about that.

That she was ill, for once. Of course. Would Siss think
so, too? Perhaps Siss would understand why.

Unn ran across the frozen, stone-hard ground which echoed her footsteps. The rimed trees stood with glades in between. She ran zig-zag between the trees so as to keep herself hidden from peering eyes. Only now would she go out on the ice and walk along the edge of the lake.

She thought about Siss. Their meeting tomorrow – when everything had evened itself out a little and was not so impossible as today. All of a sudden she was no longer alone. She had found someone to whom she could tell everything, soon.

She ran in joy towards the ice, across the frosted ground and between the rimed birch twigs. They glittered like silver. For now it was almost light. Pale stalks stuck up, rimed and bent, with pale, broad leaves. Unn knocked them over as she ran, and the silver trickled dry as sand over her boots.

She thought with joy about the ice: thicker and thicker; that was how the ice should be.

It thundered at night. You would be awake, perhaps, and would think: still thicker.

The walls of the old log house cracked, too, in this cold. The timbers were shrinking, said Auntie. If you heard that at night it was no use saying thicker and thicker, you thought: Now it’s terribly cold, it’s thundering in the house.

She was at the lake shore now, and nobody seemed to have seen her, not the least glimpse so that they could tell anyone about her. The ice was deserted, as she had known it would be, so early in the day. Later in the morning the small fry would come; they were allowed to rough and tumble here as much as they liked, since the ice was as strong as rock without any dangerous or hidden rifts. The lake was big; it was an enormous expanse of ice.

It was fun looking through the black, shining ice close to the shore. Unn was not too grown-up to do so, lying flat on her stomach, her hands shielding her face to direct her gaze. It was like looking through a pane of glass.

Just then the sun rose, cold and slanting, and shone through the ice straight down to the brown bottom, with its mud and stones and weeds.

A little way out from the land the water was frozen solid. Even the bottom was white with rime and had the thick layer of steel-ice on top of it. Frozen into this block of ice were broad, sword-shaped leaves, thin straws, seeds and detritus from the woods, a brown, straddling ant – all mingled with bubbles that had formed and which appeared clearly as beads when the sun’s rays reached them. Smooth black freshwater stones from the lakeside were also transfixed in the block together with peeling sticks. Bent bracken stood in the ice like delicate drawings. Some were rooted in the bottom, some had been caught by the congealing water as they lay floating on the surface. Then the surface had stiffened, and it had continued to build itself up.

Unn lay watching, captivated by it; it was stranger than any fairy story.

I must see more …

She lay flat on the ice, not yet feeling the cold. Her slim body was a shadow with distorted human form down on the bottom.

Then she changed her position on the shining glass mirror. The delicate bracken still stood in the block of ice in a blaze of light.

There was the terrifying drop.

Where it was deeper the bottom and everything else were
brown. Among the few weeds a small, black shellfish lay in the mud, moving one of its feet. Nothing came of it; it did not stir out of the slime or alter its position. But immediately beyond it the wall of mud plunged down almost sheer into a totally black chasm.

The terrifying drop.

Unn moved, and the gliding shadow followed her, fell right across the chasm and disappeared as if sucked down so quickly that Unn flinched. Then she understood.

Her body quivered a little as she lay there; it looked as if she were lying in the clear water. Unn felt a fleeting dizziness and then realized afresh that she was lying safely on top of thick, steel-hard ice.

It was uncomfortable looking at the sheer drop all the same. It meant certain death for anyone unable to swim. Unn could swim now, but there had been a time when she could not, and one day she had gone over just such a fall. She had been wading – when suddenly there was nothing beneath her foot. She went rigid, knowing that she was just about to – but then a rough hand had snatched her back on to safe ground, back to her noisy companions.

Unn did not finish her train of thought about the horrid drop – a streak of light came from the darkness and up towards her: a fish moving as fast as an arrow, as if making straight for her eyes. She shrank aside, forgetting that there was ice between them. There was a stripe of grey-green back, then a jerk to one side and the flick of a glassy eye looking to see what she was.

That was all, down again into the depths.

And she knew very well what the little fish had wanted. Now he was down there already, telling the others, she imagined. In a way she liked it.

But the inquisitive fish had cut across the bond that kept her tied to the spot. She was cold, too. She got up and began half running, sliding on the slippery ice. Some of the time she was on land, running quickly across headlands that jutted out into the lake, then out on the ice again. It made her warm, and it was fun.

She did this for a long time; it was some distance to the outlet. But at last she arrived.

She neither saw nor heard the waterfall. It was lower down. Here there was merely a whisper of water as it travelled downwards, and up at the outlet it was quite still and noiseless.

This was the outlet of the great lake: a placid sliding of water from under the edge of the ice, so smooth that it was scarcely possible to see it. But a veil of vapour rose up from it in the cold. She was not conscious that she was standing looking at it. It was like being in a good dream. A good dream could be made out of so simple a thing. She felt no pangs of conscience because she was out on a walk without permission, and it would perhaps be difficult to find excuses for it. The placid water flowing away from the ice filled her with quiet joy.

She would probably lose her hold and fall down into a hollow where the shadows were, this time, too, but it was a good moment and the other was chased away again by the sight that streamed towards her: the great river coming noiseless and clear from under the ice, flowing through her and lifting her up and saying something to her which was just what she needed.

They were so still, she and the water, that now she thought she heard the waterfall, the distant roar where this
sliding water threw itself over the precipice. You were not supposed to be able to hear the falls from here. She knew that from school. Now she could just hear it.

That was where she was going. And she would
not
think about the other. She would be free of it today!

All of them would be going down there on the school outing. The roar came like a faint echo through the frosty air, and really she should not have been hearing it.