The Land of the Silver Apples

mind-fetter that means someone has fallen in battle. The hammer is for Thor and the tree is Yggdrassil. My symbols. The other pictures stand for Heinrich the Heinous. The horse is Sleipnir, Odin’s horse. Heinrich always said he wanted to ride him, but of course you can’t do that unless you’re dead. Oh, curse Heinrich! He really is dead. He’s probably riding Sleipnir right now. And I’m stuck here with a useless hand and no ship.”

“You can join me at the nunnery,” Ethne said brightly. “We’ll have such fun doing penances together.”

Thorgil threw a handful of sand at her.

Father Severus knelt down beside the shield maiden, and Jack feared she would attack him as well. But she had an odd respect for the monk, considering that she’d helped sell him as a slave. “There is a purpose to everything under Heaven,” he began.

“We call it fate,” said Thorgil.

“And it is not given to us to understand its workings. You were meant to be left on this beach. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I’m here either, but we have work to do in this world. Wallowing in self-pity does no good.”

Jack held his breath. If ever there were words calculated to drive Thorgil wild, those were the ones. He saw her face turn pale, then red. Her body tensed.

Suddenly, surprisingly, she laughed. “You use words as Olaf used to use his fists, thrall-worshipper. I can use word weapons too.”

“Then I welcome you as an enemy,” Father Severus said.

They stayed on the beach for several weeks, to allow Father Severus time to recover. Every morning Thorgil climbed to a high rock and sat looking out to sea. She occasionally helped with chores, but every task reminded her of her useless hand. She would throw down whatever she was working on and return to her perch. Jack didn’t have the heart to scold her.

Father Severus lay under a tree. He seemed quietly happy, but Jack worried about his cough and the feverish patches on his cheeks. “Sometimes I think I did not sleep the whole time I was in Elfland,” Father Severus murmured. “Perhaps that’s why I’m so tired now.”

Jack understood what he meant. Glamour seeped everywhere there, so that you didn’t know whether you were awake or dreaming. Even Jack’s memories of Lucy were confused. Had he actually seen her? Did she really turn against him, or was it only a bad dream? He found it difficult to remember her face.

“Some call Elfland the Hollow Land,” Father Severus said when Jack confided these thoughts to him. “It is formed by our desires, but ultimately, it is only a reflection of something else. Do you remember their music?”

That was the one thing Jack did recall. The music seemed to hang in the air like the last thread of sunlight before total darkness came on.

“I listened to their voices night after night, trying to despise them,” said Father Severus. “I couldn’t.” He sighed.

On the beach Pega made an ingenious cairn of rocks that was hollow inside to hold a fire. On top she placed a flat piece of slate for roasting. Jack gathered whelks, sea kale, leeks, and garlic. But the hobgoblins were the champions where fishing was concerned.

They had a unique method. The Bugaboo perched on a rock out beyond the surf line and dangled his foot in the water. The Nemesis waited behind him with a club. Hobgoblin toes were long and wiggly—the Bugaboo could move all five in different directions at the same time. He demonstrated this to Pega, who told him to go away.

From below, the toes must have looked like a clutch of fat earthworms. They were certainly attractive to fish, although it was soon clear that it was important to attract the right size of fish. Once, a giant cod swallowed the Bugaboo’s leg and the Nemesis had to knock it senseless before the rest of the Bugaboo followed the leg inside.

“You won’t find better than that,” proclaimed the king, throwing the fish down before Pega’s horrified eyes. It was large enough to feed everyone.

“You’re bleeding! That is blood, isn’t it?” She gasped. Yellow-green drops oozed from a row of holes on the Bugaboo’s leg.

“You’re worried about me,” cried the delighted hobgoblin, turning cartwheels around her and spraying her with sand.

“Worrying doesn’t mean I care,” retorted Pega, wiping sand off her face.

“Oh, it does! It does! I’m so happy, I’m going to gleep!”

“Don’t!” begged the girl, but the hobgoblin was too overjoyed to stop.

Gleeping, Jack thought, moving out of earshot, had to be the nastiest sound in the world. Hobgoblins did it when they were ecstatic, which was far too often in Jack’s opinion. It was infectious, too. Once one individual began, others took it up, just as a yawn could spread through a crowd. The Nemesis, never a cheerful creature, gleeped softly as he gutted the fish.

Ethne was hopeless at all chores. Pega tried to teach her to weave baskets, but the baskets fell apart. She let the fire go out and allowed seagulls to steal fish. When Pega sent her to pick fennel, she returned with henbane. “That’s poison!” shrieked the girl, throwing the plants into the fire. “Don’t you know any better?”

“We ate henbane salad all the time in Elfland,” Ethne said huffily. “It never did us the slightest bit of harm.” In the end she sat beside Father Severus and memorized Latin prayers. Jack was certain she didn’t understand Latin, but it kept her out of trouble and entertained Father Severus.

Finally, one afternoon after a meal of roast goose (hobgoblin toes were irresistible to geese, too) the Bugaboo called a meeting. “It is time for us all to go home,” he said.

“What home?” Thorgil said. “My shipmates have gone, thinking I am dead. Often when the day breaks, lonely and wretched, I bewail my fate. There is no comrade to whom I can unburden my heart.

“The joys of hall are lost to me
And a shadow darkens my spirit.
I awaken from slumber,
Hearing the tossing, foam-flecked sea.
My kinsmen appear—how glad my heart!
But they fade with no word of greeting.”

Jack, always fond of poetry, admired her fine words, but Father Severus cried, “Good heavens, shield maiden! You make a meal out of misery.”

“I do not!”

“A true warrior shows gratitude for the bounty God sends him. You could be drowning in the midst of the sea. You could be trapped in a burning building. A thousand devils might be contending for your soul—not that they won’t someday—but in fact you’re sitting on a pleasant beach surrounded by friends. Fie on this self-pity.”

“I’ve lost my home, and I don’t have one scrap of self-pity,” Ethne announced.

“We really must have that discussion about pride, Ethne,” said Father Severus.

“To return to the immediate problem,” said the Bugaboo, “when fall comes, this beach will be uninhabitable.”

“Can we build a boat?” said Thorgil with a glimmer of hope.

“No!” said the Nemesis. “Hobgoblins never, ever go on boats.”

“Is that because of kelpies?” inquired the shield maiden.

“They swim for hours if they smell something tasty,” the Nemesis said with a haunted look in his eyes. “They follow you day and night, never sleeping, never giving up. They are tireless.”

“Now look what you’ve done,” scolded the Bugaboo. “You’ve said the K-word.” He took his friend for a short walk, and when they returned, the Nemesis was a healthy green again.

“As I was about to say before I was interrupted, it’s time to go home. Fortunately, there’s more than one cave on this coast,” said the Bugaboo.