What would the Reverend make of all this?
Jóas Illugason, born at Brekkukot, the third farm. Five years old, I was allowed to hold the rag soaked in milk to his tiny salmon gums. The married folk there wanted to keep him and raise him with their own two children, and Mamma explained that I would be fostered to them too, that it would be for the best. For the next year we seven were a family, and I helped feed life into the small boy with hair as light as mine was dark. He smelt of snowmelt and fresh cream.
They must have changed their minds. One morning I was shaken awake by Mamma, who looked at me with swollen eyes. I asked why she was crying, but she said nothing. She climbed into bed with Jóas and me, and I fell asleep against the hot curve of her body, until the caw of the house ravens woke me and I saw my belongings bundled in a sack on the floor.
That morning we started on foot and returned to the valley through an ill-tempered day full of spasms of snow. I thought I would faint from hunger. We stopped in the yard of Kornsá and before I could finish the whey given to me by the woman there, Mamma whispered in my ear, pressed a stone into my mitten and left with Jóas on her back.
I tried to follow her. I screamed. I didn’t want to be left behind. But as I ran I tripped and fell. When I got back on my feet my mother and brother had vanished, and all I could see were two ravens, their black feathers poisonous against the snow.
For a long time I thought those two birds were my Mamma and my brother. But they never answered my questions, even when I put the stone under my tongue. Years later I learnt that Mamma gave me a new half-sister, Helga, to the farmer at Kringla, and that Jóas was now a pauper, a child of the parish. But by that time I had convinced myself I no longer loved them. I thought I had found a better family, my foster-family: Inga and Bj?rn, the tenants of Kornsá.
‘HOW DID YOU SLEEP, AGNES?’ Steina had found the woman out by the patch of lovage, where she was tossing the contents of the chamber pot in the ash pit.
‘You’ll get wet out here,’ Agnes said, without looking at her. She had been using a rock to flick out the stickier contents of the pot, and was now wiping it against the grass. ‘It’s going to rain.’
‘I don’t mind. I thought I’d keep you company.’ Steina lifted her shawl over her head. ‘There, dry as a mouse.’
Agnes glanced at her and gave a small smile.
‘Look, Agnes,’ Steina said. She pointed out towards the mouth of the valley where a mass of low grey clouds was surging in from the north.
Agnes put her hand out to the sky. ‘It’s getting worse. It will be bad for the hay.’
‘I know. Pabbi’s cross. He snapped at Lauga for burning his breakfast and he never does that to her.’
Agnes turned to face Steina. ‘Does he know you’re out here with me?’
‘I think so.’
‘I think you should go back inside,’ Agnes said.
‘And do what? Have Lauga blame me for building the fire up too high? No thank you. I’m happier outside anyway.’
‘Even in the rain?’
‘Even in the rain.’ Steina yawned and looked out at the field, its haycocks bundled into stacks to prevent the damp. ‘All that work for nothing.’
‘What do you mean for nothing? Come the next fine day we’ll get on and then it will be finished.’ Agnes glanced up at the croft. ‘I think you ought to return to your mother,’ she said.
‘Oh, she doesn’t mind.’
‘She does. She doesn’t like you being alone with me,’ Agnes said carefully.
‘You’ve been here for weeks and weeks now.’
‘Even so.’ Agnes began to walk slowly down to the river and Steina turned to keep pace with her.
‘Do you think the Reverend will come today?’
Agnes didn’t respond.
‘What does he talk to you about?’
‘That’s my business,’ she snapped.
‘What?’