To the north she caught a glimpse of the valley along the pale green ribbon of the river and then the crush of mountainous shapes, one after the other, grayish yellow with scree and moss-covered plateaus; toward the center, snowdrifts and clouds melded into one another in the passes and ravines. Right across from her the Rost Range jutted out its knee, closing off the valley. The Laag River had to bend its course; a distant roar reached her from the river, which cut deep through the rocky cliffs below and tumbled in a roiling froth from ledge to ledge. Just beyond the mossy slopes at the top of the range towered the two enormous Blue Peaks, which her father had compared to a woman’s breasts.
Erlend must think this place hemmed in and hideous, find it difficult to breathe.
It was a little farther to the south, on this same hillside, but closer to the familiar slopes, that she had seen the elf maiden when she was a small child.
A gentle, soft, pretty child with lush silken hair framing her round, pink-and-white cheeks. Kristin closed her eyes and turned her sunburned face up toward the flood of light. A young mother, her breasts bursting with milk, her heart churned up and fecund like a newly plowed field after the birth of her child—yes. But with someone like herself there should be no danger: They wouldn’t even try to lure her inside.1 No doubt the mountain king would find the bridal gold ill suited to such a gaunt and worn-out woman. The wood nymph would have no desire to place her child at Kristin’s withered teats. She felt hard and dry, like the spruce root under her foot that curved around stones and clung to the ground. Abruptly she dug her heel into the root.
The two little boys who had come over to their mother rushed to do as she did, kicking the tree root with all their might and then asking eagerly, “Why are you doing that, Mother?”
Kristin sat down, placed the mulleins in her lap, and began tearing off the open blossoms to put in the basket.
“Because my shoe was pinching my toes,” she replied so much later that the boys had forgotten what they had asked. But this didn’t bother them; they were used to the way their mother seemed not to listen when they spoke to her or the way she would wake up and give an answer after they had long forgotten their own question.
Lavrans helped tear off the flowers; Munan wanted to help too, but he merely shredded the tufts. Then Kristin took the mulleins away from him without a word, showing no anger, completely absorbed in her own thoughts. After a while the boys began playing and fighting with the bare stalks that she had cast aside.
They were making a loud ruckus next to her knee. Kristin looked at the two small, round heads with brown hair. They still looked much alike; their hair was the same light brown color, but from various faint little traits and hastily glimpsed signs, their mother could tell they would grow up to be quite different. Munan was going to look like his father; he had those pale blue eyes and such silky hair, which curled in thick, soft tendrils on his narrow head. It would grow as dark as soot with time. His little face was still so round in the chin and cheeks that it was a pleasure to cup her hands around its tender freshness; his face would become thin and lean when he grew older. He would also have the high, narrow forehead with hollowed temples and the straight, jutting triangle of a nose that was narrow and sharp across the ridge with thin, flaring nostrils, just as Naakkve already had and the twins clearly showed signs of having too.
Lavrans had had flaxen, curly hair as fine as silk when he was small. Now it was the color of a hazelnut, but it gleamed like gold in the sun. It was quite straight and still soft enough, although somewhat coarser and heavier than before, close and thick when she buried her fingers in it. Lavrans looked like Kristin; he had gray eyes and a round face with a broad forehead and a softly rounded chin. He would probably retain his pink-and-white complexion long after he became a man.
Gaute too had that fresh coloring; he looked so much like her father, with a long, full face, iron-gray eyes, and pale blond hair.
Bj?rgulf was the only one in whom she could see no resemblance. He was the tallest of her sons, with broad shoulders and heavy, strong limbs. Curly locks of raven-black hair fell low over his broad white forehead; his eyes were blue-black but oddly without luster, and he squinted badly when he looked up. She didn’t know when he had actually started doing this, because he was the child to whom she had always paid the least attention. They took him away from her and gave him to a foster mother right after his birth. Eleven months later she had Gaute, and Gaute had been in poor health during the first four years of his life. After the birth of the twins she had gotten out of bed, still ailing and with a pain in her back, and resumed caring for the older child, carrying him around and tending to him. She barely had time to look at the two new children except when Frida brought her Ivar, who was crying and thirsty. And Gaute would lie there screaming while she sat and nursed the infant. She hadn’t had the strength . . . Blessed Virgin Mary, you know that I couldn’t manage to pay more attention to Bj?rgulf. And he preferred to keep to himself and do things alone, solitary and quiet as he always had been; he never seemed to like it when she caressed him. She had thought he was the strongest of her children; a young, stubborn, dark bull is how she thought of him.