Yule, Chapter Two: December 12

As it always did this time of year, morning came late. Each day, the sun rose later and later, and on the first full day of Winter — the shortest day of the year — it would only be out for four hours. Needless to say, daylight was a precious thing that was not to be wasted. This was, at least, the very strong opinion that Hanna held. She believed this so firmly that she was always awake early in the morning, but she stayed tucked into a small, warm ball beneath her covers, where she could wait and watch for the sun from the comfort of her bed. When the first glimpse of pale purple appeared on the horizon, she exploded from her comfortable position and rushed to get dressed as if her house were on fire. This was, she would argue, a similarly urgent matter. A cottage, after all, was no place for a daughter of Vikings; she would much rather feel the frozen sting of rain as she commanded a raiding party from the head of a longboat, but she had to admit that a cozy bed and fire had its advantages, as well.

The pale purple turned to gold, and the morning began in earnest. Her parents might’ve been opposed to her venturing out before the sun arose — and perhaps the whole longboat thing in general — but certainly they couldn’t complain about her playing in the fields while the sun was out, especially at this time of the year when there was little time in which play could be had.

Hanna wrapped herself in a blanket and stepped toward the fire, wondering if anyone else in the house was awake yet. The flame was dying, so she added a few fat wedges of split wood and stoked it until it roared. She clapped her hands triumphantly and warmed them in the orange glow. Nearby, her clothes from the day before were stretched over the back of a chair; she poked and prodded them to make sure they were dry, then slipped them on. Soon, her shirt, jacket, skirt, leggings, and boots were all in place, and she finally felt like she could tackle the day. There was the small matter of her hat, though, which had mysteriously escaped her.

“Now there’s someone who’s ready to start her day.”

Her father appeared behind her, already dressed in his thick furs and leathers for the day. He held a kettle in his hands, heavy with water, and trudged over to the fire, finally hanging it just above the flames. He held his beard flat against his chest as he worked, careful not to let the tongue of the fire singe it or worse.

“Except my hat,” she replied. “Have you seen it?”

“I’m afraid not, my love. You might ask your mother.”

Hanna dove to the floor, crawling and scouring over every inch and checking under the heavy wooden table. To her dismay, she found no hat. There wasn’t the slightest scrap or crumb, in fact, to be found — not while her mother kept a meticulous eye on their home, at least. She pulled out the chairs and began checking them one by one. This was now more than a simple search; it was a hunt, and her prey still eluded her.

“Ask me what?” said Freyja. She held a large hunk of bread in her hands and placed it in the wood-fired oven to toast. She carefully swept the crumbs from her dress, catching them in one palm and releasing them calmly into the flames.

Hanna popped up from the floor. “My hat, it’s gone missing!”

“You don’t say. Did it make a run for it?”

“I don’t imagine it could get very far — not in this weather, at least,” Eirík added. “Unless, perhaps, it was stolen!”

“Stolen!” cried Hanna. “Why would anyone want to steal my hat?”

“Why does anyone steal anything?” asked her father. “If it were a day later, we’d at least know who to blame.”

“I know, I know,” said Hanna. “It’s the first day of the Lads.”

“Aye, it is, and of course you know the first Lad that comes to town — “ he began, pausing dramatically to coax her into finishing his sentence.

“Sheep-cote Clod,” she relented, bobbing her head with every syllable as if it were expected of her.

“That’s my girl!” he said. “Old Einar would be proud. Sheep-cote Clod won’t be coming to town until tonight, of course, but if he were, perhaps, a day early, you know he’d be after that fine wool hat of yours. Your mother has never made a better hat than the one she gave you.”

Hanna bit her lip and sank back down to the floor. “I know.”

With a satisfied smirk, Freyja plucked the dark wool hat from the top of the mantle, where it had been sat to dry, and tossed it into Hanna’s lap. The girl’s eyes grew wide. “There you are! Thank you, Mama!”

Her mother sighed. “Try not to let any trolls steal it.”

“I won’t. I promise,” said Hanna. Her grin was sly and worrisome. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, she leapt to her feet and made for the oven, from which she snatched a hunk of the still-warming bread. With a victory cry that would make her Viking ancestors proud, she bounded out the door into the light of the brand new day. Her hat was pulled low over her eyes, and how she made it out without banging into the door or some other obstacle, her parents would never know. Hanna was Hanna, and they happily accepted that.

“Be home before dark!” her mother called out the window after her.

Eirík, too, stuck his head out the window. “And stay clear of the sheep pens in the late afternoon!”

“You say that as if she won’t be home on time,” Freyja said to him.

“Well, let’s be perfectly honest here,” replied Eirík. “You know as well as I that she won’t be.”

Freyja shrugged. He was probably right.

***

Hanna cleared the village in a matter of moments, which meant dodging the townsfolk as they emerged into the world to start their day. The woodsmen appeared with their axes dangling from their belts; soon they would head toward the dense thicket of birch trees outside the village to begin their harvest for the day. The smithy forge had just a thin trickle of smoke snaking away from its thatched roof; soon, it would rage and the sound of iron clashing against iron would peal out from within, but Hanna was too quick for it. A bell tolled from the church on the hill, where her uncle Símon was surely taking his breakfast by now; his long white beard and robes once made her curious, but she had grown accustomed to them over the years.

Finally, she was free of town and dashed over the rolling hills that separated Reykjahlíð from Old Gunnar’s farm. There was only a thin layer of snow over the ground, meaning none had come during the night, but Hanna pretended she was soaring across it in a massive horse-drawn sleigh just the same. She may not have cared much for the cold, but snow was a different matter altogether. Where an adult might see an inconvenience or a detriment, to a child, snow was a magical, miraculous thing, and it was to be revered. Just as Hanna vowed to never waste daylight during the winter, she held a similar belief for playing in snow, and if the clouds rolling across from a distance were any indication, she would soon have a vow to fulfill. In the meantime, there was much to be done at Old Gunnar’s farm.

She could see young Gunnar Gunnarsson already. He tended to the sheep in the mornings, and though the flock grew smaller and smaller every year, his duties never seemed to lessen. He was already a tall boy, head and shoulders above most everyone else his age, especially Hanna, and he was lean. His face was still bare; he wasn’t quite old enough for his beard to start growing, though he would likely claim that it was due to appear any day now. He wore a wool stocking cap on his head with a long point that dangled past his shoulders and clothes so rough that Hanna could never imagine that once, long ago, they had been new. Any colors he wore were dull, dark, and mismatched, and there was a constant look of slowness about him. Hanna knew differently, though, and did not mistake slowness of movement for slowness of wit. In fact, she found him the perfect foil for her adventures — steady when she was frantic; quiet when she was loud; willing to wait as she charged ahead. Sometimes, it’s the person you expect the least that does the most.

Now Gunnar was spreading hay about the ground in front of three very hungry sheep. Theirs was a hunger that wasn’t born out of starvation or any ill treatment — in fact, since the flock thinned out so much, there was more overall food to go around, but on the account of them being greedy and seemingly in possession of bottomless stomachs. To Gunnar, this was one of the world’s biggest mysteries — how to keep a sheep well-fed.

Hanna leapt over the short stone fence that formed the boundary of Old Gunnar’s vast pen. It was the largest sheep pen Hanna had ever seen — certainly the largest in all of Reykjahlíð, possibly rivaled only by sheep trading magnates in the west near Reykjavik — and it seemed even more enormous with only three sheep to hold, all of which were currently grazing in the same small patch of hay. In the summer, the meadow was gorgeous and green and covered entirely in white clover. The thought of that now, here on the edge of winter, was comforting but cruel. Hanna knew to expect a frozen, muddy ground in its place for several more months, at least, but summer was out there, waiting for her. She only had to survive the wait.

Her heavy leather boots crunched over the thin layer of frost and ice, and Gunnar looked up from the sheep to watch her approach. All of Hanna’s attention fell to the sheep near her feet.

“Have you milked them yet?” she asked.

Gunnar shook his head sadly. “Not yet.”

“Great! Then I’ll help.”

“You don’t have to, Hanna.”

“I know,” she said. “But it’ll go twice as fast if I help, right?”

Gunnar pointed. “There’s just three.”

“And yet I’m still right.”

“I suppose.”

“That was settled easily enough. We’ll let them eat, and then we’ll both milk them.” They both stared at the three fattened woolly sheep grazing on dried hay. They chewed slowly and constantly, as if it were a last meal for them, and every time Hanna thought they were finished, they paused and then took another loud, snapping bite. “So how long does this usually take?”

Gunnar Gunnarsson sighed loudly. “Longer than you’d think.”

“So play now?”

Gunnar nodded. “Might as well.”

They took off into the meadow, leaving a cloud of mud and thin ice in their wakes. With his long legs, Gunnar was by far the faster of the two, but he knew better than to run in front of Hanna, because he could never anticipate just which direction she might go. They were on the cusp of adulthood, only a matter of a few winters away, so they played like only children could, as if there would be no spring.

“How long do we have, you think?” Hanna called back over the cold wind. She pulled her hat further down over her forehead.

Gunnar would have shrugged, but he was too busy running to even try. “Twenty minutes. Maybe a half hour.”

“And then milk?”

“Then milk. Then skyr.”

“Skyr!” yelled Hanna. “I’d raid a village for some skyr right about now.” And she would have; fortunately for all parties involved, Reykjahlíð was now tucked well out of sight.

They soon came to the low stone wall that marked the westernmost boundary of Old Gunnar’s massive sheep pen. Hanna appraised her gait, adjusted accordingly, and leapt deftly atop the wide stone surface with minor skidding. Gunnar followed suit, but Hanna had a far better understanding of the movement of her body; the soles of his dark red leather boots slid across the icy stone, and he slid off the edge, though managed to land soundly on both feet on the other side.

“So what should we do now?” Hanna wondered aloud.

“We could check the lake,” Gunnar suggested. “We can see if it’s starting to freeze yet.”

“Brilliant idea,” Hanna agreed. She leapt to the ground beside him and headed further to the west.

A cool wind came blowing in from over Lake Mývatn. Far out into the lake, they could see the stillness of the water. It was calm and dark and certainly still water. Only around parts of the shore could they see trails of ice extending away from the banks, and they knew those would not be safe enough for exploring. The lake was the source of much of their year-round play. In the warmer months, it served well for swimming and fishing, and in the dead of winter, it was a brand new realm that offered new vistas and the promise of skating with the ragged bone skates Gunnar kept at the farmhouse. But this was a transitory time, when the lake was neither water nor ice; rather, it was somewhere in the middle, trapped in the midst of a change from one state to another. There was something unreal about it that they couldn’t quite grasp, and it was rather disappointing.

“Not yet,” said Hanna. “How much longer, do you think?”

Gunnar looked up at the sky and those dark clouds that moved ever closer. “Not long,” he said. “I bet by the end of the week it’ll be frozen solid.”

“I hope so.” She sighed. “Back to the sheep?”

Gunnar nodded, and they ran back to the pen wall, both leaping over it without a moment’s hesitation. They sailed over the low rolling hills, back to the farmhouse, where the sheep would hopefully be waiting patiently to be milked.

But when they returned, they found only two of the sheep standing over the remnants of the hay. They weren’t worried; after all, sheep wander off all the time. The point of the pen was to keep them contained, but they were always free to roam within its confines. The fact that they never did roam much was only the least bit concerning.

“Snorri? Where’s Snorri?” said Gunnar, scanning the horizon from atop his long legs. Hanna helped as much as she could, straining to stand on the tips of her toes.

“I don’t see her,” she said. “I don’t see anything out there.”

“Where could she have gotten off to?”

Hanna had no answer. Her first thought, though, was something she didn’t dare say aloud; her first thought was that the first of the Lads had already made it to town. His name was Sheep-Cote Clod, and he chased sheep for their milk, as her father reminded her every single year on this day. She could already picture the look on his face this afternoon when she would tell him about her day and he would settle the family down to here the tale. But he was just a story. Besides, it wasn’t even nighttime yet, and the Lads always come out at night — in the stories of course, because they were definitely, certainly only stories. She suddenly hoped.

“Ah well, we can milk these and look for Snorri later,” said Gunnar.

He herded both of the remaining sheep to an overhang off the side of the farmhouse and produced two metal pails, and he and Hanna spent a precious half hour of sunlight milking and caring for the sheep. Their pails now full, they took them to the farmhouse door and knocked for Helga, Gunnar’s mother, to start her work. Helga was renowned in the village as a master of all things milk, and she was quite purposeful in her work. Not a drop went to waste. She would float off the cream to make butter, and the skim that remained was divided into two batches. Part would be kept as milk for the farmhouse, and the rest would be cultured and turned to the thick, creamy yogurt with a sharp tartness called skyr. She would then strain the whey out of the skyr and use it to pickle fish and other foods that might spoil to extend their supplies for the long winter. The pantries at Old Gunnar’s farmhouse were overflowing already, and both Helga and Old Gunnar were generous to their friends and neighbors, making sure that no one in Reykjahlíð went hungry.

It was the skyr, though, that Hanna craved most. Once, after downing a bowlful of Helga’s skyr, she begged her mother to help her make a batch of her very own; this only resulted in a large, wasted pot of sour milk and the horrid smell that lingered for weeks, and thereafter Freyja banned any further attempts at skyr-making in her own home. To Hanna, though, this only meant more reason to spend time on Old Gunnar’s farm.

Helga happily took the pails of milk, and before she set to skimming the milk, she led both children to the main pantry. There, in a large metal tub, was a mountain of skyr. It was among the most beautiful things Hanna had ever seen. Helga swiped two wide-mouthed ladles through the tub and held them out for Hanna and Gunnar to take.

“You’ll need your strength if you’re to be running around out there,” said Helga. She was a large, happy woman whose face seemed trapped in a perpetual smile. Hanna could never remember a time when Helga looked sad or angry or even raced her voice above her normal, giddy temperament. “Just leave the spoons by the sink before you go.”

There was no delicate way to eat a ladleful of skyr, so Hanna made no effort to be delicate. She slurped what she could straight from the spoon, tilting her entire body back to get as much as she could. For the skyr that remained, she wound her fingers around the bowl of the ladle, scooping up all that she could and funneling it directly into her mouth. Gunnar had a similar method. Within minutes they were left with nothing more than slightly sticky hands and placed their empty spoons in the bucket beside the tub that served as a sink, and then they were back outside once again.

Gunnar looked around. The dark clouds were getting so close now, and there was still no sign of Snorri. They wandered in circles around the scraps of hay on the ground, looking for tracks, but with no fresh snow and the thorough running and chasing they’d accomplished over the last few days, the ground gave them no clues about which way she had gone. “There’s only so much daylight left,” he said. “It might be better if we split up.”

Hanna nodded. “I’ll go south, you go north, and we’ll meet on the western wall.”

“How will we know if one of us finds her before we meet at the western wall? It might be hard to herd her all that way.”

“Yell very loudly?” said Hanna, though she wasn’t sure that Gunnar could actually yell. Like Helga, she had never heard him raise his voice, but she assumed he could at least try. He didn’t appear overly concerned about the yelling, and with a nod, he took off, following the easternmost wall to the north, running in zigzags and serpentine patterns to get a better look inside the massive pen.

Hanna had no choice now but to head south, and she followed Gunnar’s lead. She would follow the wall for a while and then split off at a diagonal for several minutes at a time, until the east wall was still just within sight, and then she would make back to wall, stopping at each junction to hop on top of it and scan the area beyond. She saw nothing but white snow, gray clouds, and the dark, hilly outcroppings of rock in the distance. All the time she kept her eyes scanning the ground for tracks, but there were none. She thought of circling back to the farmhouse and searching that area again for tracks; she could, she thought, start working in a spiral pattern from where the hay was first spread out, so that each time around that initial site, she could search for tracks leading away, follow them, and bring Snorri home. But she already had a plan, and surely by the time she met up with Gunnar on the east wall, one of them would be herding the reluctant culprit along the way.

She reached the south wall at last and took a careful look around. She searched for tracks — nothing. She looked for clear spots, both rocky and muddy, where a sheep would leave no disturbed snow — nothing. She hopped atop the wall and gazed into the distance — nothing. Not far away, just on the other side of the wall, she could see the rocky fissure of Grjótagjá, where the water was hot even in the winter, marked by a constant, but subtle, breath of steam. Beyond it, hills rose in the distance between Reykjahlíð and the crater mountain Hverfjall, and further still was the black realm of Dimmuborgir, the Dark Castles, which never failed to send a chill down her spine. She never ventured that far in the winter, since there was scarcely enough daylight, but even in the warm glow of the summer, she did not dare go there without her father. He made her feel invincible. She heard stories about Dimmuborgir and the trolls that haunted its crumbling ruins. All of the sudden, she felt very chilled. She dropped from the wall back to the safety of the pen and followed the boundary west toward the lake.

Soon she found and followed the western wall, taking her north, and Gunnar appeared in the distance, headed her direction. As he came closer, Hanna couldn’t help but notice that he did not have Snorri, and worry set in.

“No luck?” asked Gunnar when they reunited.

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “Where are you, Snorri?”

Gunnar sighed and pointed at the sky. The wind blew colder off the lake. “The snow is moving in,” he said. “It’ll be dark early.”

“My parents will be expecting me home.” She searched for another word or phrase or sentence to better describe the disappointment she was feeling, but all that came out was a noise that sounded something like: “Blargh.”

“Let’s go. Snorri knows her way home.”

Hanna took one long, last look around, straining her eyes to see as far away as she possibly could. “I certainly hope so.”

***

It was almost dark as Hanna left Old Gunnar’s farm, and for once, she thought she might actually be home on time. The first shops and cottages of the village were just ahead, and none of them yet had candles lit in the windows. None of the stars were out yet, either, but Hanna thought that might have more to do with the heavy gray clouds that seemed to have settled directly overhead, as if they’d been looking for her all day. Small flecks of snow started blowing against her with the wind, and she quickened her pace.

She made it as far as the smithy when she noticed an odd, plump figure with black and white markings hovering over the old, flattened straw that served as carpeting near the smithy’s side door. It was distinctly woolly and seemed much more interested in the old hay than in Hanna passing near.

“Snorri?”

The sheep continued to graze, doing the best she could in a part of the village notoriously absent of greenery and animal feed. Some thatching for a roof was leaned against one building, and Snorri tugged and ate off of it until it slid to the ground, offering a much better vantage point for consuming the entire thing, if the sheep wished to do so. Indeed, the sheep wished to do so.

“You’ve been here the whole time, then?” Hanna asked the sheep as she pried it away from the large thatched square. “Or at the very least working your way into town, I see. I’m afraid you’re a long way from home now.”

The snow was driving harder, and the sky was growing darker. A candle appeared in the window of a cottage not far away, and Hanna knew that taking Snorri back to the farm at this hour was completely out of the question. She’d have to keep her for the night and take her back to Old Gunnar’s farm late the next morning.

“Come on, Snorri. We have an old, empty pen outside our house, so you’ll have to stay with us for the night,” she told the unresponsive sheep. At the very least, she had begun herding Snorri away from the smithy and toward her house. “Pabbi won’t be very happy about this, I have to warn you. You’re a sheep, and this is Sheep-cote Clod’s night. Now he’ll probably want to stay up all night watching for him, so at least you’ll have some company.”

“Bah,” said Snorri.

Hanna corralled and pushed and pulled Snorri all the way to her cottage and opened the gate to the ancient pen that emerged from the side of the house. It was bordered by a stone wall that was only a fraction of the height, width, and length of the wall at Old Gunnar’s farm, and of course, the pen itself was much smaller as well. This one was scarcely the size of Hanna’s house, and as far back as she could remember, it had always been empty. She remembered her father’s stories about tending to the sheep when he was a boy and old Einar lived in the house, but it had fallen into disuse. Along one side, chunks were missing from the wall, and another section threatened to tumble altogether. Eirík usually attempted to discourage her from playing in the area, directing instead to other, safer options, which usually included Old Gunnar’s farm.

She closed and latched the gate and hoped that Snorri would do a better job of staying put in a pen this size, never mind the fact that she had successfully escaped from Old Gunnar’s pen. She darted among the cottages and sheds of her neighbors, gathering up the fresher, loose hay that was being used for straw. She dumped it in front of the content sheep and caught her breath before heading inside.

“Just in time,” said Freyja as she looked up from the pot on her stove. She had a small, wry smile on her face. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

“Nope. Not hard at all,” said Hanna while collapsing into a chair beside the fire.

Eirík entered from the other side of the house, carrying a load of dry wood in from the shed. “It’s growing colder,” he said, “and the snow is really coming down. Ah, there you are, Hanna. Just in time, I see.”

“Hi, Pabbi,” she said. “I have something to tell you.”

He perked up, smiling broadly. “And you know I have something to tell you, as well. You remember what day it is, don’t you?”

“Yes, about that — “

“There will be time for stories later,” Freyja interjected. “Hanna, will you help me with the stew?”

“Of course, Mamma,” Hanna mumbled. Freyja promptly outfitted her with a knife, apron, and a small supply of potatoes and Swedish turnips to be diced into small, bite-sized cubes. She worked with her mother in the kitchen while the stew, now complete with root vegetables and chunks of fresh lamb, came to a boil. They carved the bread and cleaned the knives and pans that they had used to help prepare supper.

They ate quickly, as if their warm supper were the only thing keeping the cold at bay. Hard, day-old bread became softened in the hot broth, and the tender bites of lamb and hearty vegetable filled their bellies in the most satisfying way they could possibly imagine. This was the way winter should be—tamed and at a safe distance.

After they scraped their bowls clean, Eirík tended to the fire. He spread the embers with a dreadful-looking iron poker and placed a few fresh wedges of wood on top to let it grow. “Now come here, Hanna,” he said.

She helped Freyja clear the last of the bowls from the table and found herself a comfortable spot on the floor in front of both fire and father. She could here her mother working quickly to stack the bowls in the sink before making her own way toward the fire. She chose a chair, instead, pulling it away from the table and placing it just so that her daughter could see her with the slightest turn of her head. The drama and the delivery were for Hanna more than her, but she was supportive to the end.

“This window faces south,” Eirík began, pointing past the candle into the night sky. “Many miles from here is the land that we call the Dark Fortress—Dimmuborgir. The ground is black and treacherous, and the tall pillars that tower all around are the stony remains of what once were trolls—foul creatures that lumber in the night and cannot abide the light of day. Foulest of all is the one called Grýla, who knows from afar when children have been misbehaving. She has thirteen sons of her own, and every year on this very night, they wake up in their holes in Dimmuborgir and begin to make their way to town. They begin to wreak havoc this very night, tormenting the good folk with their trickster ways and keeping a close eye on the children that Grýla has marked.

“On the first night—tonight, that is—old Sheep-cote Clod will come to town. He is known by the two wooden pegs that replaced his legs long, long ago, and more than anything else in this world, he craves the fresh milk of sheep. So he chases after them at every chance—chases them until they surrender to near exhaustion, and he’ll drain every drop of milk straight from their udders. He’s none too fast, though, due to the legs, so the chase tends to last all night. Then, come morning, he’ll wipe the milk from his mouth and creak back to the Dark Fortress before the sun comes up, else he’ll spend an eternity trapped in the sheep pens of the village, turned to stone in the morning light.

“So build your walls up high, and lock your pens up tight. Keep a close eye on your flock tonight, for Sheep-cote Clod is now on his way to town. That’s what my old pabbi always said to me,” said Eirík, and Hanna recognized that it was her father’s turn to contribute to the story, adding his own take to the tale told to him when he was a boy.

“We had a small flock when I was still a young lad, and every year, come December—”

Hanna felt a yawn coming on. All of her running—and indeed she had run hard that day—was finally catching up to her. She thought of her dashing around the sheep pen, looking for Snorri—Snorri, who was still outside and about whom she had not yet warned her father.

“—and that’s why, to this day, we haven’t had a single sheep in our old pen. If I have my way, we may never have one again.”

She was starting to think she shouldn’t say anything at all.

Finally, though it was still early in the evening, she felt herself slipping away. The last thing she remembered was the crackle of the fire and the smile of her father atop his long, thick beard.

***

She awoke to the sound of a sheep. She was beneath the covers of her own bed, having been carried there by her father, most likely. She could still see the fire from where she lay, just as she liked it, and she could tell that it was late—so so late. The sky was still dark, of course, so it was no indicator of the actual time, but the fire was still a decent size. If it were still roaring, her parents were likely to still be awake, and if it were small and near the embers, she knew that morning would be close at hand. This fire was somewhere inbetween.

She heard it again—the distinct “bah” of a sheep outside her window. Sheep? She had no sheep, of course. Her father’s story came to mind about how he hadn’t had sheep since he was a boy and wouldn’t care to ever have sheep ever, ever again. Except, there was Snorri. Of course there was Snorri!

“Go to sleep, Snorri.” She had raised herself to the window by her bed and emphatically whispered to the other side. “I’ll take you home in the morning.”

“Bah!” cried Snorri. “Bah! Bah! Bah!” She sounded desperate, as if she were trying hard to communicate to Hanna through the wall. Just as she was becoming annoyed, Hanna then heard another noise coming from outside. There came a series of loud taps. She thought it almost sounded like something striking against the stone wall of the pen.

Hanna carefully drew back up to the window and peered out through the frosty glass. At first she saw nothing, just the form of a plump sheep huddled against the house below her, but then came the tapping, and on the other side of the pen wall, she saw something move. The night had become partly clear. Hanna could see some clouds still lingering, but most of them had moved on after depositing a fluffy white layer of snow on the ground. Now the moon was out and reflecting its soft, pale light against every snowy surface, and there—on the other side of the low stone wall—was a dark figure struggling its way into the pen.

A thief, Hanna thought. But who would thieve in this village? Here everyone watched out for one another, and she hadn’t heard about a thief in ages. Maybe it was someone from outside the village or some mysterious traveller from the road. The thief’s identity didn’t entirely matter, but Hanna knew what she had to do. She couldn’t wake her father at this hour and tell him about Snorri; he would be furious. No, she had to take matters into her own hands. She leapt into her winter clothes as if it were daybreak, moving faster than ever before to climb into her coat and boots, and before long, she slipped out the side door of the house as quietly as she possibly could.

The air was still and cold, and the snow was lit by both the moon and the hundred hundred stars that hung around it. Her attention was quickly drawn to the pen, though, and as she crept around the corner, she had a much better look at the culprit. He had made it on top of the wall now, towering over the side of the pen and heaving his breath as if it had been an enormous chore to do so. Hanna could clearly see why—his legs, or what should have been his legs, were straight and sheer. He didn’t seem to have any knees at all, and there were rounded points where his feet should have been.

Needless to say, Hanna was taken aback, but only for a moment. She gathered her composure and grabbed a large loose stone from the side of the wall.

“Hey!” she yelled to get his attention, and as soon as the man—or whatever it was—turned to look at her, she froze again. He had small eyes and a large nose, and he looked nothing like a man at all. Hanna quickly discerned the look on the thing’s face and realized that it looked just as startled as she. She took the opportunity to hurl the stone as hard as she could.

The thing instinctively reached to catch the projectile as it slammed into its stomach, knocking it back and off the wall. It scrambled and thrashed and scurried on the ground, sending snow flying all around, and then soon it was upright again and lumbering quickly away into the dark. Hanna thought to follow after, but realized that chasing some monster through the night probably was not the best idea.

“You’re okay now, Snorri,” said Hanna, and she hoped she was telling the truth. Her own heart was racing, and she spent the next few moments staring at the shadows. She saw only the peaceful, sleeping village tucked beneath a blanket of snow.

She snuck back into the house and out of her clothes, and though she returned to her own bed, she barely slept another minute. Instead she kept a close watch from her window, waiting to see what else might be creeping in the night.