The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [255]
The moon had declined, and now cast the shadow of the steading in front of her, causing the ice of the fjord to gleam with pale brightness. Where the skaters had swept it clean, the light caught in the cuts that they had made with their skates. Helga stretched her legs before her and began to massage the stiffness out of them, when two figures stepped around the corner of the steading. The moonshine revealed them to be Kollgrim and Sigrid Bjornsdottir.
“My brother!” said Helga. “Please—” But the two did not hear her or turn in her direction, although she could hear them well enough. “Nay, Kollgrim Gunnarsson,” exclaimed Sigrid, laughing, “if there are to be but six, then I will have none at all, for my heart is set upon a hood like your sister’s, and I can see that such a hood would take ten or more.” She paused and then went on, “You can see how I have kept my promise. I would not give a cheese in trade, or some dried meat. I have brought along my own scissors, which were made in England and given to my foster grandmother in the time of Thorleif’s ship, and they have damascening all along the blades here. You can see it in the light.”
Now she held up what was in her hand, and Kollgrim laughed. “Indeed, what would I do with your scissors?”
“I care not. You may give them to your sister or melt them down, for the handles are pure silver. But I will have the furs you promised me.”
“And what will you cut your thread with, if you have no scissors?”
“I will bite it, as the skraeling women do. Besides this, do you think that the household of the lawspeaker is so poor that it has but a single pair of scissors?” Her voice seemed to Helga to flow out into the moonlight in cascading ripples. Kollgrim backed away, laughing, and Sigrid pursued him. Helga saw at once that the lawspeaker’s daughter was intent upon him, although he himself did not see this. He stumbled in the snow and threw up his hands, laughing. “Take them all, then,” he said. “I have twelve or thirteen in my pack. I would not have you think that I intended to shortchange you, rather to give more in this bargain than I thought I would receive. Truly, folk say of you that you are a persistent child!”
“Do they say I am a child then?”
“Indeed, I know not what they say, for I am not in everyone’s confidence, but if they do not say this, then they should, for I have not met another like you for relentlessness.”
“Then we have made a bargain, and we must act on it now, while it is fresh.” She pressed the scissors into his hand. “Now they are yours. I would not touch them again.” Her hand fell upon his sleeve, and grasped it tightly, and after that the two went off. A little while later, Helga stood up and shook out her dress, and Gunnar came around the corner of the steading. “You have awakened, then,” he said. “Your mother has just been spreading some furs in Johanna’s bedcloset for you. I thought I would have to carry you there, as I used to when you were a child. Johanna is already asleep.” And he told her what feats of skating and storytelling she had missed, but she told him nothing of Kollgrim and Sigrid Bjornsdottir. During the next day, she could think of little except the desire in Sigrid Bjornsdottir’s gaze, and the power of her grip when she laid her hand on Kollgrim’s sleeve, and these thoughts shamed her when Jon Andres Erlendsson was about, and so she avoided him for as long as the feast lasted, which was until the morning of the third day.
At Gunnars Stead it was apparent to Helga that Kollgrim cared little for the scissors, for he left them about thoughtlessly, and finally threw them into one of the chests