children and I will also keep an eye on you!”
“And the lotus blossom I was to bring,” said the Egyptian princess, “flies by my side in the shape of a swan. I have my heart’s flower with me, and that’s the solution! Homeward! Homeward!”
But Helga said that she couldn’t leave Denmark before she saw her foster mother, the dear Viking woman, one more time. Helga thought of every good memory, every kind word, each tear, that her foster mother had cried. At that moment it was almost as if she loved that mother the best.
“Yes, we must go to the Viking house,” said stork father. “Mother and the children are waiting there, you know. How their eyes will pop and how they will chatter! Well, mother doesn’t say so much. She speaks briefly and to the point, but she means it all the more. Now I’ll just rattle a bit with my beak so they’ll know we’re coming.”
So stork father rattled with his beak, and he and the swans flew to the Viking hall.
Everyone there was still sleeping soundly. The Viking woman hadn’t gone to sleep until late at night. She lay worrying about little Helga who had been missing for three days along with the Christian priest. She must have helped him escape. It was her horse that was missing from the stable, but by what power had this occurred? The Viking woman thought about all the miracles that were said to be connected to the white Christ, and with those who believed in him and followed him. Her shifting thoughts took form in a dream. It seemed to her that she still sat awake on her bed, thinking. Outside was a brooding darkness. A storm was coming. She heard the sea rolling in the west and east from the North Sea and the Kattegat. The monstrous serpent that encircled the world in the depths of the sea shook with spasms.8 The night of the gods,
Next to the frightened Viking woman sat little Helga in her dreadful frog shape. She also was trembling and pressed herself up against her foster mother, who took her in her lap and held her tightly with love, no matter how dreadful the frog shape seemed. The air echoed with the sounds of clashing swords and clubs; whistling arrows like a storm of hail flew over them. The hour had come when earth and sky would break, the stars fall, and everything be destroyed in Surt’s fire. But she knew that a new earth and sky would come. Wheat would wave where the sea now rolled over the barren sands. The unmentionable God would rule, and Balder rise up to him, the gentle, dear one, released from the realm of the dead. He came—the Viking woman saw him. She knew his face. It was the captured, Christian priest. “White Christ!” she called aloud, and as she did so she pressed a kiss on the forehead of her hideous frog-child. Then the frog skin fell, and little Helga stood there in all her beauty, gentle as never before and with radiant eyes. She kissed her foster mother’s hands and blessed her for all the care and love she had granted her through the days of trials and troubles. She thanked her for the thoughts she had ingrained and awakened in her mind, thanked her for speaking the name she repeated: White Christ! And little Helga arose as a powerful swan, the wings spread wide with a whistling sound like a flock of birds flying away.
With this the Viking woman awoke. Outside she could hear the same strong flapping of wings. She knew it was the time when the storks departed. That was what she was hearing. She wanted to see them again before they flew, and tell them good bye! She got up and went out on the balcony, and she saw stork upon stork on the side roof and around the farm. Over the tall trees flocks were flying in great circles, but straight ahead of her, on the edge of the well, where little Helga had so often sat and frightened her with her savagery, two swans were now sitting. They looked at her with wise eyes, and she remembered her dream, and it still consumed her completely, as if it were reality. She thought about little Helga in the shape of a swan. She thought about the Christian priest, and all at once felt a great joy in her heart.
The swans flapped their wings and bowed their heads as if they also wanted to greet her, and the Viking woman stretched out her arms towards them, as if she understood that. She smiled through her tears and tumbling thoughts.
Then all the storks arose chattering with flapping wings for their trip south.
“We won’t wait for the swans,” said mother stork. “If they want to come along, they must come. We can’t stay here until the plovers leave! There’s something really lovely about traveling as a family, not like the chaffinches and sandpipers where the males fly by themselves and the females too. It’s strictly speaking not decent! And what kind of formation are those swans making?”
“Everyone flies in his own way,” said stork father. “The swans diagonally, the cranes triangularly and the plovers in curves like a snake.”
“Don’t mention snakes when we’re flying,” said stork mother. “It just gives the children inclinations that can’t be satisfied!”
“Are those mountains down there the ones I have heard about?” asked Helga in her swanskin.
“Those are thunderclouds drifting below us!” said her mother.
“What are those white clouds that are so high?” asked Helga.
“Those are the always snowcapped mountains you see,” said her mother, and they flew over the Alps, and down towards the blue Mediterranean.
“Africa’s land! Egypt’s strand!” the daughter of the Nile in her swan-skin shouted with joy, as she saw her native soil from high in the air. It appeared as a whitish-yellow wavy stripe.
The birds saw it too and sped up their flight.
“I smell the Nile mud and the wet frogs!” said stork mother. “There’s tickling in me! Now you’ll taste something! And you’ll see the African storks, ibis, and cranes. They all belong to our family, but are not as pretty as we are. They act distinguished, especially ibis, for the Egyptians have spoiled him. They mummify him, and stuff him up with spicy herbs. I’d rather be stuffed with living frogs and so would you! And you will be! Better to have something in your tummy when you’re alive than be made a fuss of when you’re dead! That’s my opinion, and I’m always right!”
“Now the storks have come!” they said in the luxuriant house by the Nile, where the royal gentleman was stretched out in the open hall on soft leopard skin cushions. He lay not living but not dead, hoping for the lotus blossom from the deep bog in the north. Relatives and retainers stood around him.
And into the hall flew two magnificent white swans that had come with the storks. They threw off the dazzling feather covers, and there stood two beautiful women as alike as two drops of dew. They bent over the pale,
