Current Works

Three Ells

When Elin carved the first animal live from the wood, she didn't know her family would fear her magic. She never imagined being sought by a bear who wanted to teach her, or by whatever it was that came to her room each night. Or that her magic would take her east of the sun, west of the moon to bring him back.

Chapter One

The first animal Elin carved free from the wood was a chickadee.

She'd never been content to carve as her father had taught her: his spoons had just a hint of ears and tail, and his ale cups' bent-necked handles could be snakes as easily as geese. Elin settled on her favorite rock and took a bit of wood out of her pocket, holding it up in the thin light that filled the clearing, her ears full of her younger sisters' chatter. She squinted down at the chunk of pine, turning it over and over until she caught the line of a chickadee's wing. Yes, there was the head, the beak, the tail. She opened her knife and began to cut away the rest.

"Why stop when we haven't found any food?" Her younger sister Kari flopped onto the grass at Elin's feet.

Marit smoothed her ragged dress over the new swells of her bosom and hips. She perched on the granite slab next to Elin, in the shade of the tallest pine tree. "Doesn't mean we can't rest, silly."

Marit would need a new dress before long, and who knew how they'd manage the fabric, when they couldn't even find enough food for them all? Settling the knife and the carving in her lap, Elin unbuttoned her pocket and pulled out the last strip of dried fish. "No food, you say?" She tore it carefully down the middle, passing half to each of her sisters.

Kari snatched it, grinning, and stuffed it into her mouth. She'd be chewing on that for a while.

But Marit pushed hers away. "I'm not hungry." She clasped her hands in her lap and began to whistle, the small sound fading quickly in the summer wind.

Elin shrugged and tossed the strip in Marit's empty basket. She picked up the wood once more and frowned. There ought to be berries by now, but the farmers had been letting the sheep into the woods, ever since the drought had browned their fields. With the stream too low for fish this year, there wasn't much left for her family. She ran her thumb along the side of the knife blade, wiping off a bit of sap. Carefully she shaved off the bits of wood that muddied the bird's shape, never raising her head from her work, not even when Marit's hand snuck down into the basket, her blonde hair hiding her face as the fish disappeared.

Elin smiled and kept carving. The sap bled onto her hands, smelling of the forest and her father's axe. "There, now." She held up the bird.

"What do you think a city lady would pay for such a trinket?" Marit asked.

Kari scrambled to her feet and took the carving carefully from her sister's hand, still chewing. "Who'd spend money on something they could make themselves?"

"People in the city don't waste their time on carving." Marit rolled her eyes at Kari, then looked at Elin for confirmation. "There was a peddler at the market last week that bought three ladles and a walking stick with a bear on top from Simen Bersvendsen -- paid him in coin, too -- and his bears always look like dogs. Lene told me."

"Marit, be kind," Elin said automatically, thoughts swarming through her mind. She took the carving back from Kari and turned it over, trying to see it with city eyes. If a peddler had paid coin, someone would pay more than that in the city. She'd wait until she'd carved enough to make the trip worthwhile, then talk to her father. He'd scoff, but not when she came back with winter supplies. Perhaps there'd be time to go again, even stay there, if she could find work.

"Well, it's true," Marit said. "If you'd had a clean dress and a free day, he'd have bought from you instead."

Elin's thoughts settled slowly down again. She held the chickadee up in the sunlight, staring first at it, then at her own grimy hands. No one would buy from a poor woodcutter's daughter, nor think to hire her. Besides, her father would never let her go.

She let out a sigh, her breath whooshing over the pine bird.

The wood turned to feathers, soft smooth quivering in her palms. The chickadee let out a highly indignant cheep, then beat free of her fingers and flew to roost in a holly bush, chirping and stretching its wings.

Kari screamed.

Petter and Nils pushed through the bushes and into the clearing, two scruffy boys with lengths of oak and empty snares clutched in their hands. "What is it? A wolf?"

"Don't be silly," Marit said, her voice shaking. "Elin was carving, and É A bird flew by and stole her carving right out of her hand. It must have." She took a deep breath. "It startled Kari, is all."

Elin stared at her outstretched hands, sticky with sap, and risked a glance at her little sister's face. Kari wouldn't meet her eyes.

Rising to her feet, Elin wiped the sap on her skirt, not caring when the next washday might be. "We're fine," she told her brothers.

Petter lowered the piece of firewood. "Trust Kari to be scared of a bird," he teased.

Nils frowned when Kari didn't laugh. He glanced once more up at Elin.

Marit was already moving towards the woods. "Break's up, Kari," she called, without looking back. "Let's check to see if those wild cherries are ripe yet."

Kari tore after her, their brothers following behind.

Elin was left standing alone, staring at the holly tree full of chickadees, wondering which one had been wood. Her heart moved like the wings that had fluttered in her palms.

Dawn the next day, Marit and Kari grabbed their baskets and fled into the woods with their brothers before Elin had put her boots on. She sighed, kissed their mother and the new baby's cheek, and promised their father they'd find something this time. Then, she set off to the holly tree once more.

As she walked, she could hear the beech leaves rustling up against each other, their limbs creaking above her, and, every once in a while, the faint call of one of her siblings. They must be heading towards the stream today. She stopped, looking back for a moment. No, they hadn't cared to wait; they'd manage well enough without her for a day.

She broke through the shadows and into the small clearing, the thin sun a faint warmth on her skin. She stared up into the holly bush, waiting for a chickadee. What had she imagined, what not? Her knife still smelled of pine sap, but the bush was quiet today. And why should magic choose the woodcutter's oldest daughter, whom even the poorest boys ignored? Must be her imaginings that her sisters feared, not her magic.

She looked down at the mud; a gold coin gleamed back at her, among deep bear prints. She picked it up, tucked up her skirts, and ran home, screaming for her siblings, wondering how she'd explain it to the baker.

That night they had bread and cheese, thanks to the blacksmith, who'd listened silently to her explanation and held out his hand for the gold. "Must've been highwaymen, dropped some." He gave her smaller coins in its place, keeping a third for himself. "I'll warn the farmers there's a bear about."

Elin thanked him, grateful her father had paid his last axe sharpening; there'd been no one else she could trust to ask. She was lucky no one had word of a theft that day.

For two weeks after, her brothers and sisters scoured the woods for gold, but whatever had left it dropped no more, and highwaymen and bears alike were frightened off as they crashed and shouted through the bushes. There were chickadees everywhere, and Elin soon gave up wondering why she'd imagine such a very strange thing. But though her fingers itched for it, somehow she never once picked up her knife.

"Can being hungry make you see things?" Kari asked one night, her pallet crushed up against the wall of the room.

Marit brightened. "Of course it can! I would have sworn I'd seen a dead rabbit in the meadow near town one day, but it was only a rock." She rose and flapped out her blanket, inching her pallet a little closer to Elin's with her foot.

Elin wrapped her scratchy wool coverlet around her tightly and held her tongue.

Elin picked up her knife once more when the baby began to teethe. It was late, so late the sun had almost set, even though it was still summer. Her father soothed his bones in the stuffy heat and watched her work. The wood was smooth under her fingers, a small oval, with the handle of the toy coming down. Before her thoughts followed, her knife flicked the wood into scales, a snake's quick tongue sliding out from an egg. She leaned forward to see, breathing across the wood, just as she finished.

The snake warmed to skin and wriggled through her fingers, the wooden egg falling aside. She dropped them on the cottage floor with a gasp.

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