The Marsh King's Daughter(68)

“I can’t. My father has the snowmobile key.”

“There’s an extra key in a compartment in the back. In a metal box, stuck to the top. The snowmobile isn’t hard to drive. I’ll teach you. Please. Get help. Before it’s too late.”

“Okay,” I said, not because The Hunter wanted me to do this, or because I believed my father was a bad man who belonged in prison like my mother and The Hunter said, but because The Hunter was going to die if I didn’t.

I sat down cross-legged in the sawdust and listened carefully as he told me everything I needed to know. It took a long time. The Hunter was in a lot of pain. I think my father broke his jaw.

—

THE NEXT TWO DAYS followed a pattern. I cooked breakfast for myself and my father. Spent the rest of the day hauling water and keeping the fire going and cooking and cleaning while my father went out into the marsh. Pretended everything was as it should be. That my mother and The Hunter weren’t dying, that my father was not a bad man. I tried to concentrate on the good things I remembered from when I was growing up, like the way my father gave me the boards and nails I needed to build my duck pen, even though he must have known that wild ducks can’t be kept in captivity the same as chickens; how he called me Helga the Fearless as I’d asked him to after I’d read the article about the Vikings; the way he carried me on his shoulders when I was little as we roamed the marsh.

On the third morning, Cousteau and Calypso called a powwow. My mother was in her bedroom. The Hunter was in the woodshed. Rambo was in the utility shed. My father was in the marsh. The three of us were sitting Indian-style in the living room on my bearskin rug.

“You have to leave,” Cousteau said.

“Now,” Calypso added. “Before your father comes back.”

I wasn’t so sure. If I left without my father’s permission, I could never return.

“What about my mother?” Thinking about her broken arm and how I had to help her sit up to eat and drink. “She can’t ride the snowmobile. She won’t be able to hold on.”

“Your mother can sit in front of you,” Calypso said. “You can reach around and hold her up while you steer.”

“And The Hunter?”

Cousteau and Calypso shook their heads.

“He’s too weak to sit behind you,” Cousteau said.

“His arm is broken,” Calypso added.

“I don’t want to leave him. You know what my father will do if he comes back and The Hunter is here while my mother and I are gone.”

“The Hunter wants you to leave,” Calypso said. “He said so himself. If he didn’t want you to go, he wouldn’t have told you how to drive the snowmobile.”

“And Rambo?”

“Rambo can run behind. But you have to go. Now. Today. Before your father comes back.”

I bit my lip. I didn’t understand why it was so hard to make up my mind. I knew my mother and The Hunter couldn’t live much longer. I’d seen enough animals die to know the signs. If my mother and I didn’t leave the marsh today, most likely, she never would.

Cousteau and Calypso said they knew a story that would help me decide. They said that when I was very little, my mother told this story to me. The story was called a fairy tale. This meant that even though the story wasn’t real, it still had a lesson, like my father’s Indian legends. They said my mother loved fairy tales when she was a girl. She had a book of stories written by a man called Hans Christian Andersen, and another by two men who called themselves the Brothers Grimm. They said my mother told these fairy tales to me when I was a baby. Her favorite was called “The Marsh King’s Daughter” because it reminded her of herself.

The story was about a beautiful Egyptian princess and a terrible ogre called The Marsh King and their daughter, who was named Helga, who was me. When Helga was a baby, a stork found her sleeping on a lily pad and carried her away to the Viking’s castle because the Viking’s wife had no children and she had always wanted a baby. The Viking’s wife loved little Helga, though during the day, she was a wild and difficult child. Helga loved her foster father and she loved the Viking life. She could shoot an arrow and ride a horse and was as skilled with her knife as any man.

“Like me.”

“Like you.”

During the day, Helga was beautiful like her mother, but she had a wicked, wild nature like her real father. But at night, she was sweet and gentle like her mother, though her body took on the form of a hideous frog.

“I don’t think frogs are hideous,” I said.

“That’s not the point,” Cousteau said. “Just listen.”

They told me how The Marsh King’s daughter struggled with her dual nature; how sometimes she wanted to do what was right, and other times she did not.

“But how does she know which is her true nature?” I asked. “How does she know if her heart is good or bad?”

“Her heart is good,” Calypso said with conviction. “She proves this when she rescues the priest her father captured.”

“How does she do this?”

“Just listen.” Calypso closed her eyes.

This meant she was going to tell a long story. My father did the same thing. He said that closing his eyes helped him remember the words because then he could see the story in his mind.