Peer closed his eyes. Inwardly he saw that flying figure. He saw Bjørn, turning his head and beginning to race across the shingle. He saw Kersten, throwing herself to the ground, pulling the cloak over her.
“She saw Bjørn coming, I think,” he said slowly. “And she just dived to the ground, and rolled herself up in the cloak and crawled into the water. And I looked away then, because Bjørn was pushing the boat out. He rowed out, shouting for her–but it was so wet and misty, I lost sight of him.”
They sat in a huddle with their heads together.
“I couldn’t stop her!” Peer cried. “I was holding the baby…”
“Hush.” Gudrun took his hand. “No one blames you, Peer. And Kersten trusted you with her child. But the seals–didn’t you see any seals?”
“Yes,” Peer admitted slowly. “After Bjørn disappeared, the water was full of them. But–Gudrun!” He swallowed. Can it be true? Is that really what I saw? Does it mean Bjørn once trapped Kersten…and kept her against her will?
Gudrun wiped her eyes. “It’s sad, either way,” she said quietly. “And worst of all for that poor little mite over there. Well, we’d better all go to bed. There’ll be plenty to do in the morning.”
Glumly, they wished one another good night. Peer had been given old Eirik’s sleeping place, a bunk built into the wall with a sliding wooden panel for privacy. He clambered in, but as usual left the panel half-open so he could see out into the room. Loki got up from his place by the fire, stretched, and pottered over to jump up on Peer’s blankets. He turned round three times and settled down behind Peer’s knees, yawning. The familiar weight was comforting. Peer slid a hand down to scratch his dog’s ears.
He lay, bone weary but unable to sleep, staring out into the darkened room. Gudrun had covered the fire with chunks of turf to keep it burning till morning. Small red eyes winked hotly from chinks and crannies, and he sniffed the homely smell of scorching earth and wood smoke. On the other side of the room, he heard Hilde tossing and turning. After a while she sighed and lay still. Gudrun snored.
Rain tapped on the shutters. Every time Peer closed his eyes he saw Kersten, rushing past him, hurling herself into the sea. I should have stopped her. I should have raised the alarm. I did everything wrong. Was Bjørn still out there, rowing hopelessly over dark wastes of heaving water?
Peer dropped into an uneasy doze. A cobwebby shadow scampered from a dark corner to sit hunched on the hearthstones. Peer woke. He heard a faint sound, a steady lapping like a cat’s. A satisfied sigh. The click of a wooden bowl set stealthily down.
Peer watched between his lashes as the Nis set the room to rights, a little rushing shadow, swift as a bat. He hadn’t seen the Nis in a long time. Sometimes he glimpsed a wispy grey beard or a little red cap glowing in the firelight, but when he looked closer it was always just a bit of sheep’s wool escaped from Gudrun’s spindle, or a bright rag wrapped around Sigrid’s doll. He’d been hurt that the Nis wanted so little to do with him, when they’d shared so much. The Nis had rescued him from the lubbers, the disgusting creatures who lived in his uncles’ freezing privy. It had helped to save Loki from his uncles’ savage dog, Grendel. But now, living in a happy household with plenty to eat, it kept out of his way.
“Perhaps you don’t need one another any more,” Hilde had suggested when he talked to her about it. “Down at the mill you were both outcasts. Your uncles treated you both so badly, you had something in common.” Peer saw what she meant, but still he missed the Nis.
Now here it was again, as if to comfort him for this terrible day. It frisked round the hearth, sweeping up stray ashes, dampening the cloth over the dough that Gudrun had left by the fire, and turning the bowl so that it should rise evenly. Finished, it skipped lightly up on to the edge of the creaking cradle and perched there. With a furtive glance over one shoulder, it extended a knobbly forefinger into the cradle to prod one of the sleeping babies, then snatched it back, as if it had touched red-hot iron. It chirruped disapprovingly and hopped down.
Peer raised himself on one elbow. “Nis!” he called softly, half expecting the Nis to vanish like a mouse whisking into its hole.
The Nis stiffened. Two beady, glinting eyes fixed on his. Behind him, Loki broke into a grumbling growl; Loki had never liked the Nis.
“Quiet, Loki,”whispered Peer. “Nis, I’m so glad to see you. It’s been ages! Why don’t you talk to me any more?”
The Nis glared at him.
“What has you done, Peer Ulfsson?” it demanded, bristling.
“Me?” asked Peer, surprised. “What do you mean? I brought Kersten’s baby home, that’s all.”
“Yes, it is all your fault!” the Nis squeaked. Its hair and beard frilled out into a mad ruff of feathery tendrils. “Foolish, foolish boy! What was you thinking of to bring such a baby here?”
“Wait a minute!” Peer sat bolt upright. “That little baby has lost her mother. What did you want me to do–leave her?”
“Yes!” hissed the Nis. “She doesn’t belong here, Peer Ulfsson. Who is her mother? One of the savage sea people, all wild and wet and webbed. Brrr!” It shook its head in disgust, rapid as a cat, a whirr and a blurr of bright eyes and whiskers. “The likes of them doesn’t belong in housen, Peer Ulfsson.”
“You’re a fine one to talk!” said Peer angrily.
The Nis’s eyes nearly popped out of its head with agitation. “Think! If the sea people come to claim her, what then? What then, Peer Ulfsson? Besides, how can the mistress feed two childs, eh? Poor little Eirik. He will starve!”
“No he won’t,” said Peer. “Eirik’s nearly weaned. He eats all sorts of things.”
The Nis ignored him, covering its face with two spidery hands. “Poor, poor Eirik!” it mourned, peeping through its fingers. “No milk for him! No food! The little stranger eats it all, steals his mother away. Like a cuckoo chick!”
“Oh, come on!” Peer rallied. “I thought you liked babies. What’s wrong with her?”
“Everything!” fizzed the Nis. “This is not a proper baby, but a seal baby. Not one thing, not the other.”With its head on one side, it added more cheerfully, “Maybe she will pine, maybe she will die!”
Peer almost choked. “‘A seal baby.’ You’ve been listening to Gudrun, but she doesn’t know. Bjørn wouldn’t…Kersten wasn’t! Ralf doesn’t believe it, and neither do I. And even if it was true, what are you saying? Just because her mother might be a seal woman, you want the baby to go–yet it’s quite all right for you to live here?”
“For me?” The Nis nodded vigorously. “The Nis is very useful in a house,” it said virtuously. “Often, often, the mistress says she can’t manage without me!”
“How nice for you,” said Peer.
The Nis simpered, plaiting its long fingers. “So the baby will go!” it chirped.
“No–actually, the baby will stay.”
The Nis’s lower lip stuck out and its eyes glittered. “Peer Ulfsson is so clever,” it hissed. “Of course he is right. He knows so much more than the poor Nis!” It turned its back on Peer.
Peer tried to calm his own feelings. The Nis had always been prickly, but he was shocked by this unexpected selfishness. Still, he owed the Nis a lot.
“Don’t be angry,” he said.
“Huh!” snapped the Nis without turning.
“Oh, really, Nis–let’s not quarrel.”
“If the baby stays–I goes.” The Nis delivered this ultimatum over its shoulder, its face still half-averted.
“I think you’re—”