Kirstie

In those days, Inga and Buttercup visited regularly to where Kirstie’s house became like a second home, and they spent the night often enough.

“But there was so much yelling,” Buttercup explained about Captain Harrold’s visit. She fluttered down to the table where Kirstie made a soft cushioned stool just her size. “It was scary.” she finished and settled down.

“But it turned out all right,” Inga said.

“I heard the yelling all the way up here,” Yrsa said whether that was true or not.

They all looked at Kirstie, but Kirstie had something else in mind. “Buttercup, come here.”

“Come where?” Buttercup asked. “I am here.”

“No, here,” Kirstie said and used her hands to show where she meant. She thought there would be enough space in that spot. The fairy complied and everyone looked curious before Kirstie said, “Now, get big.”

Buttercup fretted and swayed a little back and forth in the air until she made up her mind. She got big and lost the points to her ears and the wings at her back. Of course, her fairy weave clothes grew with her, so she did not appear naked in her big size. She looked down, like one embarrassed, but as Kirstie thought, she never got big before for Inga.

Yrsa let out a little gasp at how beautiful the fairy was, as all fairies should be. Buttercup looked to be about eighteen, the same as Yrsa, and Kirstie nodded to say she understood in human terms they were a smidgen younger than Inga, though Buttercup was actually one hundred and fifty-seven and Yrsa was one hundred and thirty-three. Of course, Inga saw Svator get big in the big house war meeting, but for some reason it never occurred to her to ask Buttercup to get big.

“Is this okay?” Buttercup asked without looking up.

Inga stood and hugged the girl. “You look beautiful,” she said. Yrsa and Kirstie passed a glance and got up to join the hug, and Buttercup’s small voice came out from the midst of all those huggers.

“Now I am going to get happy-weepy.”

Kirstie let go and Yrsa followed, wiping her own eyes a bit. Inga backed up and Kirstie spoke. “You can get little again if you like.”

Buttercup thought about it and shook her head. “I can stay big for a while,” she said and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Kirstie found her a regular chair and said that now she could get big when she wanted to help Inga or Mother Vrya in their work.

“I don’t know,” Inga said. “She already helped in the birth of Bodil’s baby. Poor Bodil was in terrible pain, screaming pain, and even Mother Vrya was at a loss as to what to do. Suddenly, Buttercup came racing in and hovered over the bed, hands on her hips and shouting. “Quiet. You are not having a leg chopped off. You are having a baby and that is a wonderful thing. You keep screaming and you will just scare your own baby. You don’t want to scare you own baby.” Bodil looked up at the voice and said, “Oh, a fairy.” She reached up, but Buttercup kept back. But after that, Bodil delivered her baby without another sound. It was like magic, like a miracle, like you talk about.”

Kirstie reached down beneath her shirt. She had a small wooden cross made and wore it around her neck on a leather string, but she said nothing at that time. Instead, she said, “Can’t count on that response from every human. Some might see the fairy and scream louder.”

“I know,” Buttercup said. “That is why I stay hidden in Inga’s hair.”

Inga turned to Kirstie. “I’ll never be able to braid my hair again.”

Kirstie smiled. About half of her hair was loose, but about half was beautifully braided in two long strands that fell down her back.

When Kirstie was not learning about weapons or visiting with Inga and Buttercup, she went to the village center. That happened regularly enough, and Yrsa often went with her. They always found the people in the village warm and friendly. It was not just that they knew Kirstie all her life, or even that they knew Kirstie’s parents and like them well enough. It was because they credited Kirstie with saving their village and saving so many of their lives during the Vanlil invasion and the rebellion of the exiles, all of whom eventually had their heads chopped off by the king.

Often enough, Kirstie went to the village to keep up with her friends. She met with Hilda regularly, and Hilda took her to the marketplace to look at things such as a wife and young mother might want. There was no disguising what was on Hilda’s mind. Yrsa went with them occasionally. Hilda expressed a little jealousy toward Yrsa’s closeness with Kirstie, but oddly enough, she never asked where Yrsa lived. Somehow, she got the impression that Yrsa might be from Varnes, though maybe she lived on this side of the river.

“What I honestly don’t understand is your obsession with weapons and fighting,” Hilde said. “I mean, look. Isn’t this cloth just beautiful?”

“Silk,” Kirstie named it. She knew Captain Harrold brought it back from Kent at the cost of a few men’s lives. “I’m not obsessed. I am sure when I am older, I will agree. It is beautiful. But right now… My father had a son, you know, but he did not live. I feel it is my duty to carry on the family tradition for the day when I have a son.”

Hilda did not exactly buy the explanation. “So, you plan to marry someday and have a son?”

“Kare keeps threatening me.”

Hilda smiled at that. “Liv says she is never going to marry.”

“Liv’s father might have something to say about that.”

Hilda shook her head. “Liv’s father and mother are not around much. There is something strange there. Liv is strange. She is getting stranger and stranger the older she gets.”

Kirstie nodded. She saw Liv a few times over those years. and while the girl seemed normal enough in a way, Kirstie could not disagree with Hilda that in some ways the girl seemed stranger and stranger.

One time when she got to the village, she found the king’s ship in the dock. Two men in particular, Lind and Gruden, seemed especially interested in finding Elgar the Saxon. They heard in other villages how Elgar organized the counterattack that defeated the enemies of the king.

“We just want to honor him for his help,” Lind said, though he was not a convincing liar.

“Being a Saxon, I am sure he went back to Saxony, or West Saxony, or wherever he came from,” Chief Kerga told them, and they left, not entirely happy. Kirstie sighed her relief. The people in Strindlos would not betray her, even if the king offered a reward. Well, at least that would depend on how much of a reward he offered.

Another time in the village, she ran into Kare and Thoren. In fact, she saw them several times over those years, and each time they seemed creepier than the time before. Fortunately, they sailed in Rune’s ship twice before they found a place in Harrold’s ship. Captain Harrold lost a few men in the encounter in Kent, and since Kare and Thoren had some seasoning, and since they wanted to make a change, he took them for his crew.

Thoren said, “Rune and Frode could not find their way out of a sack of grain.” Kirstie heard that as out of a paper bag. She smiled at the time and ran home to get out her father’s charts and things and review everything she could remember about navigation, as her father taught her.

After Kirstie turned thirteen, and she began to show that she might not be a skinny little blonde beanpole her entire life, Kare started in on the drumbeat that he was going to marry her. It got annoying. He said he was saving all his money, and Thoren’s, too. He said he was going to get his own ship someday soon. “Just you watch.” She watched. Granted, he was something of a leader among the boys in his generation, about Inga’s age. But he was roughly eight years older than her, which made him twenty-one to her thirteen.

To be honest, eleven, twelve, and thirteen was when girls did start thinking about marriage. If Kirstie’s father was alive, that was the age when he would start looking around to make a good match. The presumed quality of that match depended on his wealth, power, status, and standing in the community and region. It had nothing to do with what she wanted. Kirstie imagined she would have been married at sixteen or seventeen to some stranger, and it would have been up to her to make it work. But then, her father was gone, and that liberated her in some sense.

Kirstie thought about Inga, who turned twenty and almost qualified for the term old maid. Inga was pretty enough and would have made an excellent catch for any man, but her parents were also gone. Her father died at sea. His ship got caught in a terrible storm and he got washed overboard to never be seen again. That happened often enough. Then, her mother caught the winter flu and died despite the best efforts of Mother Vrya. Mother Vrya took Inga at that point to be her pupil, and Kirstie’s mother somehow convinced the girl to help watch over her wild child, Kirstie. Mother Vrya encouraged that situation, because it gave her pupil some income and a stable home environment she could count on in time of need. It also gave Inga a chance to provide a steadying influence on the wild one in her charge.

And Kirstie did settle down, some. But Inga did not marry, though she may have had a couple of offers. Kirstie got the feeling Mother Vrya ran interference for Inga with Chief Birger and others to see she did not get roped into a relationship she did not want. From time to time, Kirstie thought Kare would not be a terrible choice. At least she knew the boy—the man, creepy as he could be at times. He was not a stranger. Still, at thirteen to his twenty-one the age difference seemed insurmountable. Kare was serious. Kirstie had some words for him.

“Pervert,” she called him. “Pedophile.” Mostly, she had no interest in marriage, so it was just as well she did not take his comments seriously. She normally laughed in his face when he brought it up. At that time, she had far more important things to worry about, like where she needed to go.