The Marsh King's Daughter(43)

My grandfather caught up to me after a few hours. By then it was well after dark. If my grandmother hadn’t been in the passenger seat, I probably wouldn’t have gotten in. Naturally I felt pretty stupid after we got everything sorted out and my grandfather promised to order another bike like the one that sold. Back then I felt stupid a lot.

I’m not telling these stories to make people feel sorry for me. God knows I’ve had enough of that. I just want people to understand why, after a few years, I felt like I needed to start over. Sometimes a person thinks she wants something, but then after she gets it, she finds out it wasn’t what she wanted at all. That’s what happened to me when I left the marsh. I thought I could make a new life for myself, be happy. I was smart, young, ready to embrace the outside world, eager to learn. The problem was that people weren’t so eager to embrace me. There’s a stigma to being the offspring of a kidnapper, rapist, and murderer that’s hard to shake. If people think I’m exaggerating, they should think about this: Would they have welcomed me into their home knowing who my father was and what he did to my mother? Let me be friends with their sons and daughters? Trusted me to babysit their children? Even if someone says yes to any of these, I’ll bet they hesitated before they did.

Luckily my father’s parents died within a few months of each other not long after I turned eighteen and left to me the house where my father grew up. Because I was of age, their lawyer was willing to transfer the property without telling my mother or grandparents. As soon as the paperwork was ready, I packed a suitcase, told them I was moving but not where to find me, changed my last name to Eriksson because I had always loved the Vikings and figured this was my chance to be one, and cut my hair short and dyed it blonde. And just like that, The Marsh King’s daughter was gone.

—

THE CABIN DOOR OPENS directly into the living room. The room is small, maybe ten by twelve, and the ceiling is so low, I could touch it if I stood on my tiptoes. I leave the front door open behind me. I have a problem with closed-in places that smell of damp and mold.

The television is on with the sound off. On the screen an announcer is mouthing the latest about the search for my father. Video footage plays in a box above the man’s left shoulder: a helicopter stirring the surface of a pocket lake while patrol boats circle. At the bottom of the screen, a ticker tape scrolls: Search continues and FBI brings in more manpower and Prisoner’s body found?

I stand as still as possible, trying to sense the sway of a curtain, a small intake of breath, a molecular displacement that would indicate I’m not alone. Beneath the mold and mildew I can smell bacon, eggs, coffee, the smoky residue of a gun that’s been recently fired, and the sharp, metallic tang of fresh blood.

I wait. No sound. No movement. Whatever happened was over long before I arrived. I wait some more, then cross the living room and stop in the doorway to the kitchen.

A naked man is lying on his side between the table and the stove. Blood and brains spatter the floor.

Stephen.





16





THE CABIN

The skald spoke of the golden treasure the Viking’s wife had brought to her wealthy husband, and of his delight at the beautiful child which he had seen only under its charming daylight guise. He rather admired her passionate nature, and said she would grow into a doughty shield maiden or Valkyrie, able to hold her own in battle. She would be of the kind who would not blink if a practiced hand cut off her eyebrows in jest with a sharp sword.

Every month this temper showed itself in sharper outlines; and in the course of years, the child grew to be almost a woman, and before anyone seemed aware of it, she was a wonderfully beautiful maiden of sixteen. The casket was splendid, but the contents were worthless.

— HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN,

The Marsh King’s Daughter



Get your coat,” my father said early one morning the winter I was eleven. This would be my last winter in the marsh, though I didn’t yet know it. “I want to show you something.”

My mother looked up from the hide she was working. As soon as she realized my father wasn’t talking to her, she quickly put her head back down. The tension between my parents was as thick as fog. It had been like this since my father tried to drown my mother. “He’s going to kill me,” my mother whispered not long after, when she was sure my father wasn’t around. I thought this might be true. My mother didn’t ask for my help or expect me to side with her against my father, and I appreciated that. If my father truly wanted to kill my mother, there wasn’t anything I could do.

My mother was working the deer hide my father tanned into buckskin. Aside from cooking and cleaning, this was her main winter job. Last winter she made a beautiful fringed buckskin overshirt for my father. This winter, as soon as she had enough buckskin, she was going to make one for me. My father promised to decorate my shirt with porcupine quills according to the design I drew for him with charcoal on a piece of birch bark because we were out of pencils and paper. My father was a talented artist. The shirt was going to look a lot better than my picture.

I put on my winter gear and followed my father outside. My spotted fawnskin mittens were too small for me now, but I was trying to get as much use out of them as I could before I had to add them to the discard pile. I wished my mother had made them bigger, but she said my fawn was so tiny that this was the best she could do. When my father shot his deer that spring, I was hoping for a doe that was pregnant with twins.